Moments
by Gandalf3213
Summary: A series of short drabbles between two characters...Frodo and Sam, Merry and Pippin, Legolas and Aragorn...as they figure out new relationships, as they experience life, love, moments during the books. Chapter 17: Fellowship
1. Merry and Pippin

**A/N: So we finally worked up the courage to do a Lord of the Rings fanfic. Here's the deal with this one: There are fifty drabbles in each chapter. If anyone wants a drabble to be expanded on, write us in a review and we'll probably write it. If not...well, there may be expanded ones at the end. Happy reading! Happy 2010! **

**Merry and Pippin**

_And whither then? I cannot say. _**JRR Tolkien**

**#1: Cold**

When they're up on the mountain and all the rest of the Fellowship were worrying about getting into Moria without dying, Merry was worrying about Pippin, because he was so cold his lips and fingers were starting to turn blue.

**#2: Choices**

Merry didn't have to go on the Quest. In fact, he was dead set against it, preferring the quiet, slow ways of the Shire. But Pippin was going, and he really didn't want to be anywhere Pippin wasn't, so he went, and though he regretted many things since then, he never regretted that.

**#3: Blankets**

Boromir didn't really agree with bringing the Halflings on the journey, but when he saw the youngest, Pippin, shivering on his side, Merry curled up close, both of them barely the length of his own legs…well, a man could go without a blanket for the night, if it meant those two would stop shaking.

**#4: Cousins**

Sometimes, Frodo would get a pang of jealousy in his chest, because though he and Pippin and Merry were all cousins, it seemed like the other two were closer to each other than they would ever be to him.

**#5: Flowers**

After walking for so long his legs were still twitching when he sat down, Merry was surprised and touched when Pippin tucked a chain of posies into his hair _for good luck_.

**#6: Snow**

Snow came to the Shire rarely, so walking right into a huge pile of it was terrifying and exhilarating, and if it hadn't been for Pippin's wide smile and accurate aim, Merry didn't think he'd ever learn the exact purpose of a snowball.

**#7: Lessons**

Though Pippin was the most talkative and energetic of the Fellowship, all the members found him a useful sounding board. Even years later, Pippin never had the heart to tell Gimli he hadn't listened to a word of the dwarf's lessons on Moria and mining, and that, in fact, he'd only pretended to listen because of the expression on Gimli's face when he was talking about his home was so happy that he couldn't bear to see it disappear.

**#7: Battle**

Gimli would still remember feeling his heart seize up when he saw Pippin's feet sticking out under that huge troll carcass, because damn if he didn't feel something for the lad after thirteen month journeys.

**#8: Bandages**

Aragorn hated patching up Pippin's numerous scrapes, because he would inevitably have to tell Merry, in as curt words as he could manage, to leave, because he was making his patient too rowdy.

**#9: Bedside**

Even though Aragorn forced Merry to leave Pippin's side when he was injured, the young hobbit would always wake up to find a groggy Merry keeping vigil until he was better.

**#10: Orcs**

When Merry lifted up Pippin's tunic in the middle of Fanghorn forest, he knew that those orcs were lucky they were dead, his height be damned, because no one should be able to beat his cousin so severely and get away with it.

**#11: Knowing**

No matter where they are or what situation they're in, every time Pippin upset or frightened and turns to find his cousin, Merry's hand is always there, waiting, as if he knows exactly how to help.

**#12: Song**

Merry can carry a tune as well as the next hobbit, but Pippin has one of the most beautiful voices in the Shire, a soprano that tiny girls would weep at, wishing their voices were as pretty. And as often as he could, Merry would cajole his cousin into singing, because suddenly their surroundings didn't seem as bleak anymore.

**#13 Nightmares**

Pippin used to get them when they were younger, and Merry would always be willing to stay up late into the night and cuddle the hobbit as he cried. They had stopped for a while, but on the journey they began again, and every time Pippin woke from one of the dreams he'd hear his cousin's voice at his elbow, "You're okay, Pip. Go back to sleep. You're okay." And somehow, after that, he was.

**#14: Token**

They are about to leave Rohan, and Aragorn has been looking everywhere for the smallest member of his tiny Fellowship (now much smaller than the original.) Somehow, he finds that he can't berate Merry for running back nearly a quarter of a mile to get the pipe weed Pippin had given to him. After all, with the many skirmishes just outside of Gondor, it could be all the lad had left of his best friend.

**#15: Forest**

For the first time in a great many years, Legolas finds he has someone to talk to about forests who loved them as much as he. Tiny Pippin barely comes up to his waist, and could not even see the tops of most bushes, but he grins happily every time they travel under green boughs, and the expression is enough to make old Legolas smile, too…

**#16: Flu**

Somehow, even though Merry promised he was old enough to watch Pippin for the day (in fact, he'd put his hands on his hips and said, "I'm not a baby anymore, I'm nine!") He wasn't ready for a four-year-old with a fever, begging him too make him stop hurting.

**#17: Horses**

The first time Merry got on a horse, he was thirty years old, and he fell off. They were higher and more cumbersome than even the most ornery of ponies and he declared that he would never again be riding on those damn things, preferring to walk with Gimli. Still, he had to smile when Pippin came galloping by behind Legolas, tiny fists raised above his head in triumph.

**#18: Stories**

When they were old, tottering hobbits wandering around Gondor, all Merry had to do was look at Pippin launch into an animated story to remember exactly why he was still alive.

**#19: Grey Havens**

"It would be an adventure." Pippin had whispered in the carriage. They both knew, or guessed, that Frodo would be leaving with Bilbo, that the invitation was open.

But Merry squeezed his hand, "I think we've had enough adventures for one lifetime, Pip." And that was enough for Pippin to stay, for why would he want to go anywhere Merry wouldn't follow?

**#20: Responsibility**

Aragorn came to Pippin as Strider, not the King of Gondor, when he told him that Merry had died on Pellenor Fields, and he was lying in the Houses of Healing, and would Pippin like to see him? The stricken, awful look on the lad's face was enough to make Aragorn reach out and try to comfort the little man, holding him in his arms and humming softly, making assurances that Merry's death hadn't been in vain and not believing any of them.

**#21: Isengard**

Never had Merry been more scared than when he figured out they were being taken to Isengard, because how was he supposed to protect Pippin from the torture that would inevitably befall them both there?

**#22: The White Wizard**

The entire Fellowship looked on with wondrous bemusement as Pippin cajoled and teased Gandalf, acting very much like a young puppy attempting to bait an old dog into playing, and they were all surprised when Gandalf let loose a firework of fiery butterflies, "just to quiet the boy."

**#23: Gardening**

Even as a child, Merry never understood Pippin's fascination with flowers, and it was only years later that a sheepish Pippin told him that the first flower Sam had ever let him plant had been the exact same shade of Merry's hair, and he knew that he wanted to make more of that color.

**#24: Mushrooms**

The first time they stole mushrooms, Merry was eight and apparently 'corrupting' the three-year-old Pippin by bringing him down to Uncle Bilbo's and striking up a conversation with Sam just long enough for Pippin to grab an armful of the newly-ripened food and run out, laughing in a very un-secretive manner.

**#25: Debt**

Merry always told Pippin that, though the younger boy owed Merry his life many times over, Pippin had given him a life worth living, and that was so much more important.

**#26: Brothers**

Pippin grew up with three sisters. Merry was an only child. When Boromir began talking about Faramir, two weeks into their climb through the Misty Mountains, Pippin had squirmed until he was under the big man's elbow and said, quietly, that he would be Boromir's brother, for a while, if he wanted…

**#27: Tea**

Even though it was five am and the sun is barely up, and he must have been tending the fire and been on watch for hours, even though it was cold and he was using the last of his leaves, Merry still has tea ready for Pippin when he woke up in the morning, with plenty to share with the other members of the Fellowship

**#28: Familiarity**

It was comforting, after waking up in a strange place in a strange city with a lot of people who were much bigger and stronger than him, for Merry to see Pippin perched on his bed, half-asleep and bruised but very much alive. "'Morning, Pip." He murmured, content that he at least had this one familiar thing and suddenly able to drift back to sleep.

**#30: Laugh**

When they were young, Pippin never won at hide-and-seek, because his laughter would always give him away. Of course, Merry would pretend he didn't hear it and walk away, making the younger hobbit laugh louder.

**#31: Request**

"Don't let me die alone, Merry." The plea came in the dark of the night, when the hobbits had just bedded down near the shore of the Anduin.

"You're not going to die, Pip." Merry had said lazily, rolling over under his blanket, trying to ignore his talkative cousin.

A hand reached for his; small, calloused, "Please don't let me die alone." It was so heartfelt, so serious that Merry felt a tear roll inexplicably down his cheek.

"Of course not, Pippin. Of course not."

**#32: Regret**

It was Gimli who came to Merry and told him about the troll, about rolling the tiny boy over and finding him already blue, already dead. "He couldn't have felt no pain, lad. He was too far gone for that."

But Merry had already turned away, because he remembered the one thing Pippin had always asked for was to not die alone.

**#33: Writing**

Like every little hobbit, Pippin had learned his letters and numbers and how to read, but not much more than that. Still, he found a passion for writing poetry, for singing out the words, because it made Merry smile at him from across the table.

**#34: Allegro Moderato**

He knew he should be happy, the day that his wife gave birth to a son, but even after holding the child, naming it, he still couldn't get over the fact that this Merry would not be quite the same as the other one he'd loved and lost.

**#35: Time**

Merry learned how to tell time by how energetic Pippin was, because while the sun changed from season to season, Pippin always acted as himself.

**#36: Mission**

Pippin never took the quest lightly, no matter what his outward appearances were. He just wanted to make sure that, while they were busy saving the world, his friends didn't end up worrying themselves to death, and that was a pretty good mission to him.

**#37: Pranks**

They were jokesters who took nothing seriously, but when Merry left a snake skin in Pippin's pack (Pip had always been afraid of snakes), he'd forgotten that the snake's mate would curl up beside the dead one. It took both Legolas and Aragorn to bring Pippins fever down, with a trembling Merry holding his hand the entire time. "No more pranks." He promised quietly, and for the first time in two days Pippin's eyes looked up at him without fever.

"You'll never be able to do that, Merry." Pippin knew him so well.

**#38: Danger**

Despite the danger and the odds that the tiny hobbit would never return, Aragorn could not find strength in him to call Merry back when he charged at a gang of goblins in the Mines of Moria. If he'd been swifter, smaller, and unoccupied by the troll, he, too, would have followed his burning blood and chased the goblins through their tiny tunnels if it meant finding Pippin.

**#39: Smell**

"Do you smell that, Merry?" Pippin took a deep, steadying breath, the sobs coming out through his voice. But even when he thought of Gandalf (Gandalf, who had always been gruff, aloof, but who had also permitted him and Merry on the quest, and that must be something, right?), dead in Moria, he still couldn't help but stare at the brilliant blue.

"What, Pip?"

Pippin sniffed again, smiling even broader, looking radiant through his tears. "It smells of the Shire."

**#40: Small**

They knew they were small. Whether they were called hobbits, Shire-folk, or Halflings, they knew they weren't the height of the Big Folk, of men and elves or even dwarves, and they didn't really want to be, but when Merry was surrounded by three huge, drunk, bitter men complaining about wars and Halflings and rings that had no place being found in the first place, Pippin rushed to his rescue, and would have hit the men, small as he was, except for the tiny hand on his shoulder, begging him not to.

**#41: Garden**

Though Merry didn't care as much for keeping a green lawn as his younger cousin did, when Pippin was sick with the pox and unable to be seen by anyone who had never contracted the disease, Merry included, all he could do was tend the garden, hoping that its owner would be alright.

**#42: Hero**

The first time Merry realized that Pippin idolized him, he was seven years old and running through the woods with a toddling Pippin in tow. When he jumped onto the Brandywine Ferry, he never suspected that Pip might try to do the same. Only the sight of his tiny cousin, sinking through the river, made Merry dive into the water, swimming skills be damned. From then on, Pippin called him a hero, however ill-deserved that title may be.

**#43: Names**

Maybe it wasn't odd that, when they had sons, Merry's first born was named Peregrin and Pippin's was named Meriadoc.

**#44: Apologies**

Whenever they argue, which is more often than anyone realizes, all Merry wants to do is apologize, but he can't seem to find the words to break the silence

**#45: Wish**

He'd never wished for anything more than taking back those words, yelled in anger, irrationally. "Get away from me, Pip! I wish I never met you!" The stunned, hurt look all of Pippin's face was enough for Merry to want the words back immediately and yet he knew, at the same time, neither would ever forget them.

**#46: Heartbeat**

In the houses of healing, with Merry's arm and soul and mind on the line, Pippin curled up next to his cousin, ear to his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart to assure himself that his best friend was alive, for now.

**#47: Guilt**

It's only Pippin's arm on his shoulder and a small, sad smile that made Merry realize that maybe, _maybe_, Boromir's death was not his fault.

**#48: Pipeweed**

It's only a plant, a dead plant at that, but between the time he and Gandalf left Rohan and the time that he found Merry again on Pelenor Fields, he never let go of that bundle of pipeweed, never smoked it, because he was afraid that it would be the last thing Merry would ever be able to give to him.

**#49: Avalanche**

As the snow and rock that they are standing on in the Misty Mountains begins to crumble, and boulders and ice are raining down from above, Pippin can only reach for Merry, because he knows that he would rather die with his best friend then live alone.

**#50: Love**

Seconds before they take off running after Aragorn, a suicide mission directed at the Black Gate, Merry's hand touches Pippin's and he squeezes it quickly. "I love you, Pip." He murmured the youngest member of the Fellowship, the boy who'd grown up too fast in eleven months, to his favorite, only little brother.

**Review? Please?**


	2. Interlude I

_**#13 Nightmares**_

_Pippin used to get them when they were younger, and Merry would always be willing to stay up late into the night and cuddle the hobbit as he cried. They had stopped for a while, but on the journey they began again, and every time Pippin woke from one of the dreams he'd hear his cousin's voice at his elbow, "You're okay, Pip. Go back to sleep. You're okay." And somehow, after that, he was._

Meriadoc Brandybuck opened one eye and immediately shut it again, willing the figure next to his bed away. When, two seconds later, his eyes opened again, he sighed and sat up, "What, Pip?"

He loved his little cousin. Everyone in the Shire knew that. The two often spent weeks together, forgetting which house actually belonged to them, swapping clothes and sisters and secrets like tradable items. But Merry really did prefer Pippin in the daytime, after the sun had been up for a decent interval and he'd eaten first and second breakfasts.

Pippin was a lot to handle sometimes, to say the least.

But now, the six year old was at his bed, looking so pathetically small that Merry, as always, couldn't resist petting the dark red, curly hair sprouting from the top of Pippin's head. It was only then that he realized the tiny hobbit was crying, and crying in earnest.

Merry couldn't stand it when Pippin cried. His cousin Frodo, who was ancient at nearly twenty and would know of such things, said that, really, he shouldn't fall over himself so much, and a good cry once in a while was actually good for small hobbits, especially Tooks, who were known to be quite the sensationalists.

But Merry didn't have the heart to deny his cousin anything, and, humming distractedly to himself, he picked up Pippin in one arm. He'd noticed, last summer, how much bigger he was than Pip, and had been quite disconcerted by it until the Gaffer assured him that hobbits usually grow at Merry's age, around ten, and if Pippin was still barely over a foot tall…well, he'd grow, eventually, or stay tiny like some of the Proudfoots, who never reached two feet. Either was respectable, if you were a hobbit.

The house breathed with the sighs of Pippin's sisters, his parents and two dogs. It was dark, as Pippin slept in the nursery at the center of the house, and Merry slept with Pippin when he visited. In the blackness, Merry fumbled to set Pippin upright on his knee, but eventually both boys were perched in a way that made them happy, if not completely comfortable.

"Mewy, 's vewy dawk," Pippin lisped into the silence, and Merry held him close and continued humming. All hobbits knew how to hum, and to sing, as music was one of their great pleasures. Merry was not a particularly good singer, but Pippin, even at his young age, was excellent, with a high, sweet soprano that made their girl playmates sigh with jealousy, wishing their voice sounded that pure.

His humming eventually got Pippin to stop shaking, though Merry knew the sobs which racked the boy's body would stop only with sleep. Pippin, active imagination that he had, was subjected to frequent nightmares, no less than three times a week, and Merry often comforted him in the quiet hours of the morning.

"Do you want a story, little Pip?" Merry asked, hoping to tease the boy out of this awful silence, or, if that didn't work, to distract him until he was once again consumed by sleep.

Usually being called 'little' would have worked Pippin up to a lather, until he was screaming and spitting that he was normal sized, and Merry wasn't so big, really. This would inevitably lead to a wrestling match that turned to tickling, and Pippin would be mercilessly pinned beneath Merry until Frodo, tasked with keeping half an eye on them most afternoons, tore them apart and told them to go bother Sam in the garden if had so much energy.

At night, though, Pippin cowered with fear of…oh, everything it seemed. Fear of the dark, and spiders and mice. Fear of things far away, like the Big Folk and dragons and a huge lake of water called Ocean. He would recount these fears, one by one, if Merry tried to tease his nightmares out of him, and work himself up into a fright all over again.

No, the only thing to do at night, when Pippin was upset and Merry was feeling like a very poor cousin indeed, was to tell a story, and then perhaps, if Pippin was still awake, to sing.

"Which story do you want?" Merry asked, and felt, rather than saw, Pippin shrug against him, hands clutching Merry's under-shirt.

"Okay then…" Merry thought for a second, then gathered a deep breath. He wasn't the best story teller. In fact, Frodo and Sam both told much better stories than he, and Pippin would, too, if he didn't lisp so and remained focused on his story. But Merry could keep track of plots and characters, weave interesting tales, even if he didn't talk quite so earnestly of battles and mountains and mist hanging in branches of elven-trees.

"Once upon a time there was a hobbit, and he was a respectable hobbit, for he grew to almost three and a half feet tall and threw excellent parties." Pippin loved parties, and went to as many as he could, even if he snuck in. He would inevitably drag Merry along with him, but they were never reprimanded, primarily because the only thing hobbits liked better than going to parties was throwing them, and, after all, more really was merrier.

"He ate every one of his meals, and spent most of the day either cooking or eating, though he did tend his garden, so that his mushrooms were always fresh." Food was never far from any hobbit's mind, particularly Pippin's. "He never read from books, preferring to listen to stories his cousin would tell him at night when he couldn't sleep." Merry felt Pippin's smile against his stomach and continued, rubbing the child's small back.

"He spent his evenings on long walks that brought him all over the Shire, but never farther, for he never understood why one would ever want to leave such a beautiful place. But this hobbit lived right in between Tookland and Buckburough, and often went into Hobbiton and even, if he was feeling especially brave, down into the Old Forest."

Both hobbits agreed that they would never want to leave the Shire, ever. The world, according to Uncle Bilbo, was such a big, loud, hasty place, and neither boy had been fond of adventure. Sam liked tales of elves and woods, and Frodo always listened, wide-eyed, when Bilbo spoke of races of men and dwarves, peoples hobbits scarcely remembered, but both Merry and Pippin were content in the Shire, weren't tempted by tales of battles and fortresses and Kings. Who needed them, when you had such a slow, calm, familiar life here?

"This hobbit," Merry continued, noticing Pippin begin to calm in his arms, "Lived to be over a hundred years old. He had a whole host of nephews and nieces, but no children, for he never really liked girls." Merry laughed as Pippin stuck out his tongue. Pippin, at six, saw girls, especially his sisters, as cackling, loud, boring folk who never had any fun, and why would he ever want to marry one of them?

"And when he died during second breakfast, his last thought was that the mushrooms were very good, and he should pick some more before teatime." Pippin laughed at that, and Merry hugged him, glorying in the innocent sound.

"That how I is gonna live, Mewy!" Pippin declared, as Merry eased him onto the bed so they were on their sides, hugging to keep from falling out of the tiny bed.

Merry patted Pippin's hand, "You're going to grow very old and never have a single adventure?" He questioned, though he believed it. That was the dream of every hobbit.

"Yup! An' you is gonna be wit' me, an' we won't ever go away!" Pippin sighed contentedly, burrowing himself into Merry's arms, "Pombise?" The small boy mumbled, not waiting for the answer before he fell asleep, still smiling.

"Yeah," Merry murmured, "I'll be with you. We won't ever go away." He paused, hugged the child tighter to him, "I Promise."

**Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first chapter! There's going to be one-shots like this between all the chapters, whichever drabble ya'll like best, basically. So please review and tell us!**


	3. Aragorn and Legolas

**Aragorn and Legolas**

_All that is gold does not glitter,  
Not all those who wander are lost. **Fellowship of the Ring**_

**#1: Playmate**

Legolas first met Aragorn when he was six hundred and thirty-two years old and Aragorn was eleven. In each of their cultures, they were about the same age, and Legolas became his playmate. For years he was ferreted between Rivendell and Mirkwood, always yearning for his home in the mountains, for his friend, for Aragorn.

**#2: Estel**

"Oh, Estel." Legolas breathed, smiling up at the radiant figure of his friend perched on a tree. The small eleven-year-old Dunedain had woken up in the early hours before dawn to be the first to greet him at the edge of the woods where Rivendell blended into the rest of the land.

Estel meant _hope_ in elvish, but to Legolas and Aragorn, it would always meet _home_.

**#3: Halfbreed**

It was during one of their hunts, often month-long excursions taking them deep into the country, blending the boundaries between forest and river and plain that Legolas first heard the word Halfbreed applied to his friend by passing elves, three hundred years older than Aragorn, elves who should know better. Legolas floored them with well-placed kicks and, when Aragorn reminded him that elves should not express anger, said that he was merely defending a man's honor.

**#4: Mutiny**

It took seventy years, but the first time Legolas had to stand up to his childhood friend, because he really believed that Aragorn was mistaken when it came to the fight at Helm's Deep, his heart was pounding in his chest, because even if he thought in his mind that his course of action was logical, he knew in his heart that going against his Estel was wrong.

**#5: Council**

It wasn't saving the world, or protecting Frodo, or destroying the ring that made Legolas volunteer his life at the Council of Elrond, it was the knowledge that, if he didn't go and Aragorn ended up dying, he would never forgive himself.

**#6: Vision**

They were meditating, and Aragorn was fidgeting. "Calm yourself, Estel." Legolas breathed, opening one eye to look at his friend. "You are doing yourself no favors by refusing to meditate. You are gravely injured."

"I do not want to close my eyes, _mellon_." Aragorn whispered, and Legolas looked at him carefully, remembering whispers of visions that hung around the man child. Before he could put that into a question, the seventeen-year-old sighed and tapped his arm, sending electric shocks through the elf's touch-starved body. "I do not want to see you as you were before."

And Legolas nodded, because he understood, because every time he closed his eyes to meditate, he saw Aragorn, broken, an arrow piercing his leg, saw the scene through the eyes of his own inadequacy: he'd been shot in the chest, the shoulder... It just never occurred to him that the young man would care as much for him as he did for Aragorn.

**#7: Flute**

"Are you aware that elves invented music?" Legolas asked, taking his mouth of the flute long enough to speak. He was playing a beautiful melody, low and haunting and so achingly familiar that it seemed to resonate inside of Aragorn's bones, in his soul, and that more than anything made him believe his friend's words.

**#8: Que Sera, Sera**

"What if I don't want to grow up to become King?" Aragorn asked one day, tossing his practice sword from hand to the other. They were fourteen, and the trees of Rivendell were in full bloom. The question had come out of the blue, and Legolas was unprepared for it. He was a Princeling, yes, but he had three older brothers and it was quite possible that the burden of the throne would never be thrust on him.

"Perhaps when the time comes, you will think differently." Legolas pointed out. "But the future is not ours to see. What will be will be, my Estel."

**#9: Say**

"I wish I never met you!" Aragorn turned his back on Legolas and ran swiftly, perhaps faster than even the elf could keep up with, not that he was chasing. He was old, very old, and yet those words still managed to hit that soft, vulnerable part inside of him, still managed to elicit one glittering, perfect tear.

**#10: Regret**

"I wish I never met you!"

He'd been taught not to look back. In battle, you do not have a second chance, but when he ran away, like a coward, like the weak man he was, he looked back to see Legolas crying, and never in his life had he ever wanted anything more than to take the words back.

**#11: Missing**

Legolas has been missing for almost three months, gone on a scouting expedition with two of his trusted elves, securing the perimeter of Mirkwood against the orcs that were getting more and more abundant there. The other two elves were found, dead, a week after they left, but not Legolas. Elrond, Arwen, the twins, all watched Aragorn slowly become more and more listless. He stopped eating, learning, stopped sword playing and taking walks and singing. He just…stopped. And there was nothing they could do about it.

**#12: Relief**

When Legolas is finally able to come home after two months of being captive in orc camp (and if they'd known who he was, they would have definitely killed him) the first person he saw was Estel, who met him on the plains during that long, torturous journey home. "I've missed you, _mellon_, my friend." Legolas had murmured, his voice hoarse and ragged from too many hours of those screams so unbefitting an elf.

Aragorn didn't say anything, just crushed his weight against the much older being and held him there, and if was at that moment that Legolas realized the man was as relieved to see Legolas as he was to see the rest of the world.

**#13: Exhaustion**

He had miles to go before they were even close to finding the younger hobbits, and he was exhausted. "Just a few more steps, Estel." Legolas urged, though he was worried about the limits Aragorn was pushing himself too. They were all injured from the Uruk'hai battle. What if Aragorn was more hurt than he let on? But they had to keep moving, or Legolas was afraid that they wouldn't be able to start again, and if that happened, Merry and Pippin wouldn't be the only ones lost to them.

**#14: Old**

"This forest is old. So old it makes me feel young, as I haven't since I began traveling with you." He spoke to Aragorn, to Gimli, and smiled. He was still barely a dot in the life spans some elves had. His father was nearing three thousand, his brothers each several centuries older than himself.

"When will you learn, _mellon_, that you are old?" Aragorn crept up behind him and pushed the steel of his blade under Legolas' neck, earning a laugh from Gimli. "If I were a foe, your ancient ears would have betrayed you to death."

Legolas smiled and whirled too fast for either Aragorn or Gimli to follow. "Perhaps so, but I can still best you at speed, youngling." He danced forward then, holding two of Aragorn's knives high above his head, an accomplishment.

**#15: Brothers**

Elladan and Elrohir taught Aragorn to fight, to dance, to play music. They taught him how to be an elf and encouraged him to embrace his human body. But at the end of the day, the twins would leave to battle and talk in a way that only people who knew and trusted each other implicitly could, and Aragorn would be alone.

When he met Legolas for the first time, he attached himself to him because he was lonely and adventurous and ready for a chance to get out of Rivendell, but he mostly hung around with Legolas, at first, because he reminded Aragorn of his elvish brothers.

**#16: Words**

It happened less often the older they grew, but when they were younglings, Aragorn often thought he needed to prove himself to the elves, to Legolas, prove himself because of his ancestry, though he had little choice in the manner of his birth.

The reckless, suicidal path was stemmed then stopped when Legolas told Aragorn, fiercely, forcefully, "You are the bravest man --- nay, the bravest person --- I've ever met,Estel, and it is a great honor to me to be serving under he who will one day have a role in the shaping of our world."

**#17: Hobbits**

Legolas often roamed through the Shire on his many treks between Rivendell and Mirkwood. The hobbit land was green and rich and rife with young life, happy life, life that understood and respected nature and wanted nothing to do with war and strife. The first place Legolas took Aragorn, when they left Rivendell together, was this simple place, because he felt he had to share it with someone.

**#18: Fall**

The necklace was hard and heavy in his hand when Legolas held it, when he carried it with him. He was going to give the Evenstar back to Arwen, back to Rivendell. He was going to have to tell the twins and Lord Elrond and Aragorn's lover that the man had been lost while he stood not a hundred yards away.

And the necklace was so heavy…

**#19: Somewhere**

Aragorn doesn't know where it is, but between long walks under dense trees and months spent under the stars, somewhere between elvish and the language of man, between careful conversations and easy banter, Legolas became his best friend.

**#20: Language Barrier**

Whenever Legolas is angry with Aragorn (angry in a way that only elves could be, so quiet, yet radiating ire, hidden power) he reverts back to Falathrin, a dialect of elvish invented in Mirkwood that is beautiful on the tongue and ears but Aragorn cannot understand, no matter how much he wants to make things right between them.

**#21: Difference**

The difference between elves and men is that men are mortal, and though that fact is there, staring the pair in the face, Aragorn and Legolas chose to ignore it, because sometimes it is easier to delude oneself than face such hopeless facts.

**#22: Broken**

He couldn't help Legolas. Perhaps if the positions had been reversed the elf, who was so much stronger than him, would have been able to move the tree, but Aragorn could not.

"Stay with me, _mellon_. Help is on the way."

But Legolas couldn't. His mind was a sheen of white and the pain… "Goodbye, Estel." And he drifted into unconsciousness before he could watch Aragorn's heart break.

**#23: Running**

"I do not want you to watch me die, _mi mellon_." Aragorn's voice was paper thin and hoarse and Legolas allowed him that luxury. After all, the human had lived to be nearly three hundred years old. "_Im lhaew_. I'm sick, more so than Arwen knows. My time will come soon."

"And I will stay with you until the end." Legolas swore. "I have been able to put up with you for three centuries, Estel. I do not intend to run away now."

But then Aragorn looked at him, eyes round, big as saucers. "Please."

So, really, it was Aragorn who had the idea to build the boat.

**#24: Comfort**

"Elladan! Elladan!" Still, Aragorn was calling for his lost brother. Elrohir had carried his twin on his back through the battle, unwilling or unable to let the body be forgotten on the field. Legolas had tried to find Aragorn to warn him, to comfort him, but he hadn't been there in time, and the young man, soon to be King, saw the body his brother was carrying.

"Shh…" But Legolas could not say it would be alright, not when he himself was hovering on the knife's edge of tears. "Shh…calm yourself, Estel." Even he did not believe the words, but seeing Aragorn, so crushed, so…young…it made Legolas' old heart tear in two.

**#25: Proof**

For the moment, Legolas cannot care about the outside world, about the brewing battle right within Helm's Deep. All he can focus on was Aragorn's heart beat, rapid and hot and definitely there beneath his fingers letting him know that Estel is, impossibly, alive, and won't fade away if Legolas closes his eyes.

**#26: Goheno Nin**

"Goheno nin." A young Aragorn murmured, kneeling at Legolas' bedside. The elf was told that Aragorn had been there for the six days Legolas had hovered on the precipice between this world and the next. "Goheno nin. Forgive me, _mellon_."

Legolas propped himself on his elbow, even though it made him dizzy, even as he thought of the arrow shot by his friend, aiming for the warg that had attacked Legolas and missing, penetrating deep into the elf's chest. "Estel." He said the word as carefully and quietly as he could, and, impossibly, Aragorn looked at him. "There is nothing to forgive. You saved my life. _Le hannon._ Thank you."

And when he drifted back into unconsciousness, he felt the warm weight of Aragorn's hand in his, a hope, a promise, to never let go.

**#27: Anger**

Aragorn is so angry that Legolas put himself in harm's way to protect him, but in his heart he knows that, no matter how furious he is, he can't blame him because he would do the same for Legolas.

**#28: Weep**

As they wash the filth of battle, the streaks of the blood of kith and kin from their bodies, Legolas doesn't realize his tears are aiding the process until Aragorn touches one of them. "Why are you crying, _mellon_?" And Legolas doesn't have words enough to explain, so he just shrugs, wraps his arms around Aragorn and squeezes until both aren't quite sure what happened in the first place.

**#29: Thy Heart**

Legolas never suspected that his life would lie outside the forest. He never suspected that he would end his days in the company of a dwarf, barely seeing his childhood friend. But every time he does meet up with Aragorn they put their heads together and Legolas says _Estel_ at the same time Aragorn says_ mellon_ and once again Legolas' heart is whole.

**#30: Rest**

"Please lie down, _mellon_, you have a fever."

"Gandalf…Mithrandir…"

A tear drop on his hot cheek, then the same voice. "Shh…please rest…lie down, _mellon_, you have a fever."

"Mithrandir…"

**#31: Absolution**

After Helm's Deep, after Legolas betrayed Aragorn with his words and was pushed to the point of exhaustion, they spent the next day in saddle. He didn't know how to ask for forgiveness, not for this. He'd questioned Estel's ability in front of a roomful of people who expected Aragorn to be strong.

A bump against his body makes him look up into the eyes of the future king. "_Mellon_, you have been silent all morning. Are you injured?" Aragorn's eyes were so concerned but held something else..forgiveness, perhaps.

And, if Legolas wasn't sure, Aragon's hand touched his face, impossibly gentle, which gives him more absolution than words ever could.

**#32: Music**

Aragorn smiled as tiny Pippin, barely a teenager in the standards of men, sang in voice as pure and sweet as a dove. He turned to Legolas to comment on the wondrous sound only to find his friend walking through the snow, oblivious to his surroundings except for the tears in his eyes.

**#33: Torment**

"We will not abandon Merry and Pippin to torment and death. Not while we have strength left." Aragorn looked so fierce, so ready to go out and kill every Uruk'hai he met, that Legolas didn't have the heart to tell him that Merry and Pippin were most likely dead, and, if they continued on this path, they would be as well.

**#34: Sorry**

"Where's Aragorn?" It's the first thing Legolas says when he awakens to the warm light of Rivendell. All he could remember was the fire swirling around them, cornering them in one section of the wood, leaving the only option: to jump off a cliff into swirling currents.

"Mithrandir, where's Estel?" He looks up into the ashen face of the wizard and _knows_, even if doesn't want to consider the possibility.

"I'm sorry, Legolas." And it's the finality of Gandalf's words that bring tears to his eyes and make him turn away, because at that moment for Legolas it is the end of the world.

**#35: Perfect**

Aragorn knows he isn't perfect, and being around the graceful, beautiful, strong elves only accented that fact, but around Legolas he didn't have to be perfect. He just had to be Estel, because that's all Legolas wanted him to be.

**#36: Garden**

It seems that everyone in the Fellowship is connected to the Earth in some way. Sam grew up a gardener, and Frodo grew up with Sam. Pippin loved the Earth and the flowers almost as much as Legolas did. Merry and Boromir conceded that, indeed, when the world was in bloom in the Spring, nothing could top the smell of cherry blossoms that were omnipresent in the air. Gandalf respected the earth for its beauty and its awesome power.

Aragorn loved to garden because it was something elves had cultivated, and, if nothing else, Aragorn loved the elves.

**#37: Pathos**

Once, when they were journeying across the mountains, a very young Pippin asked Aragorn why elves kept their emotions bottled up inside. Aragorn stared at the tiny hobbit for several minutes before answering. It wasn't that he didn't understand the question, it was that he didn't understand how anyone could miss how elves displayed emotion more prominently than anyone, with song and dance and kind words on dark nights.

"They do not keep them bottled up, my very young hobbit. Legolas and other elves do not show emotions because if they did, those emotions would destroy them." Aragorn stopped walking and knelt until he and the young hobbit were level. "You see, elves just love things too much."

**#38: Logos**

Later, he was told it wasn't logical that he volunteered his own life on the chance, the slim chance, that somehow it would save Aragorn, but to Legolas, nothing in his life had ever made more sense.

**#38: The Brave**

They were riding up a steep mountain when Aragorn told him that his dream was to become an elf.

"You know you cannot do that, Estel." Legolas told the eleven year old as gently as he could manage

Aragorn was quiet for a long minute. "I know in my heart that it is not possible, _mellon_, but it is my dream to become like my brothers and _Ada_ and you. I just want to fit in with my family, and be one of the brave."

**#39: Travel**

Even the Ranger had not traveled all the way into Mordor, not even on the most extensive of scouting missions. And, though he knew he was just being a fool, he would never be able to tell Legolas how much having a familiar face with him would be a comfort on the long road ahead.

**#40: Fade**

"Legolas!"

But the elf was already gone, the light faded from his eyes, knife wounds littering his chest, and in the dark and chaos of Helm's Deep, it seemed as if Aragorn was the only one to watch, to care, as the elf passed into the next world.

**#41: Achievement**

"Congratulations, Strider." Merry and Pippin's high voices carried over the noise of the crowd and Aragorn nodded at them, a smile spreading across his features at the sight of the tiny folk.

Pippin reached up for his hand and gripped it tightly, tugging Aragorn towards the ground until they were eye to eye. "He always wanted to see you become King, like he knew it was going to happen all along."

Beside him, Merry nodded. "He'd be happy for you, you know."

_I missed you, Estel_. Aragorn turned to see Legolas leaning against a draped wall, a smile flitting across his face, blue eyes dancing, and finally Aragorn begins to smile widely.

"I know," Aragorn says in response to Merry. With one last little smile, Legolas fades, and Aragorn turns his back on the vision. "I know."

**#42: Rain**

Legolas always turned his face up, towards the rain, because he said rain was the whisper of fish breathing, the cool kisses of angels, the hum of crying snowflakes. And, sometimes, when Aragorn looked up into the fury of a storm, he could almost believe him.

**#43: Drawing**

Aragorn wasn't very good at it, but Legolas had the natural talent elves possessed for all things beautiful. When they were running for those long days, Aragorn would wake up in the morning to Legolas (always Legolas, who used the heightened endurance of his race as an excuse to take every watch) outlining against the ground a sharp, poignant, achingly beautiful diagram of their story, a testimony to their attempt to destroy the Ring and save the world, left behind for others to see until the wind blew the drawing away, left behind just in case something happened, just in case they didn't come back, just in case…

**#44: Sea**

"I know how to swim, Estel. I just don't want to." Legolas pulled his legs up closer, eyeing the water beneath him distastefully, making it very, very hard for Aragorn to believe him.

**#45: Lie**

Legolas looked at the towering Oiliphants and the destruction they were spreading and knew that he had only one choice. He caught Aragorn's tunic and helped him slay the orcs and goblins all around, giving them time, just enough time, for a few words.

"I have to go." Legolas said, staring up at the giant creatures. "I know I can fix this."

Aragorn followed his gaze, eyes widening slightly. "You'll be back. You can't leave me forever."

"I won't." Legolas lied, already flying towards the oncoming charge. To the wind, to himself, to the man he was leaving behind, he could only whisper, "Goodbye, Estel."

**#46: Sickness**

"No…"

"Shh…Estel, you're here with me. We're in my home. You are safe here."

_A blade, a camp, cold nights, rain, a burning in his throat, in his chest, all over. _"No…Legolas, please!" Teenaged back arched in agony, one tiny drop of water landing on it from the elf over him, crying because he had no idea how to help.

**#47: Different**

He hadn't really been the same since the day Legolas died, though few attribute his new personality to that. Shell-shock from the war, perhaps, anguish over the many lives lost, but only the Fellowship and Arwen understood the real reason why Aragorn never smiled properly after that, why he'd spend sunset alone, looking towards the woods. For seventy years, he and Legolas had been in each other's company, and now that was gone, and he would never be the same.

**#48: Heartbreak**

Aragorn used to think that, if Legolas carried on the way he was going, his heart would break before too long, because Legolas would kneel over everything he killed and mourn the life lost so thoroughly it would be thought that the animal was a beloved pet, not something shot for sustenance.

**#49: Power**

Though Legolas knows it is wrong, that it goes against everything he's been taught by his father and Lord Elrond, he knows that it is a very bad thing indeed if both he and Aragorn are captured by the enemy, because he will do anything to keep his friend from being hurt.

**#50: Love**

It was something that went mostly unspoken between them, already known by both, that every time Legolas said _Estel_ and Aragorn said _mellon_, they were expressing all the love between them, and that was enough…it was enough.

*******

**Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first chapter! Merry and Pippin are our favorite characters, too, and there should have been five expanded drabbles for them. Same rules apply for these guys. Pick some of your favorites and we'll write the most popular. A few notes: We totally made up the ages to suit the story. In the movie the hobbits were young and in the books they were old and Legolas was young and _bah_, we chose ages as they suited us. **

**Review? Please?**


	4. Interlude II

**#46: Sickness**

_"No…"_

_"Shh…Estel, you're here with me. We're in my home. You are safe here."_

A blade, a camp, cold nights, rain, a burning in his throat, in his chest, all over_. "No…Legolas, please!" Teenaged back arched in agony, one tiny drop of water landing on it from the elf over him, crying because he had no idea how to help._

_*******_

Legolas let his back slide against the slick ground, trying not to let the pain of his injuries show on his face. He didn't want to give their captors any more reason to hurt him, or Estel.

Aragorn was faring far worse than he. Orcs, it seemed, had an old vendetta against the race of men and once they realized that Estel, though he dressed and walked and talked like an elf, was not in fact one of the fair race, they'd begun to…the only word was _mutilate_…his body, destroy his spirit.

"Oh, Estel." Legolas ghosted one pale, bound hand over the body of his friend. "What am I ever going to do with you?"

They were still in Mirkwood, on the outskirts, in a place that Legolas rarely ventured, but they were within the Woodland Realm, and Legolas had no doubt that his father or one of his brothers would find them before long. He knew these facts and they comforted him, but he could give no comfort to Estel lest the information alert their captors and forced them to press on.

Legolas knew that the only reason they were being kept alive was because they were valuable prisoners, but while the small army of elves would be able to find them easily as long as they remained in the familiar setting of Mirkwood, scouring the mountains or plains for two small beings would be an insurmountable task, even for those as powerful as Elrond and Legolas' father.

Estel was barely breathing, his teenaged body shaking from the wounds. And just days before he'd been laughing and healthy, happy to have brought down a warg before it could attack their camp.

Legolas leaned close, until his breath tickled the tiny hairs of Aragorn's ear, "Estel, _tua es no I'men." _Help is on the way.

He had faith in that fact. Finding him and Aragorn was his father's job. His job was to keep his Estel alive that long.

"C-cold, _mellon_." It was the hitch, the stutter at the beginning of the word that made Legolas see red.

He hoped whoever found them would kill the orcs, the whole lot of them, because they'd hurt his Estel, because they'd scared him.

"Stay with me, Little One." A twitch of the lips was the only indication of a smile, but it was enough. Legolas hummed absent-mindedly under his breath and smoothed his friend's hair, willing him to sleep during their brief respite from their captor's tortures.

The first time Legolas had called Aragorn 'Little One' was when Aragorn was barely ten, still so much a baby in the eyes of elves. Back then, Legolas had been halfway through his sixth century on this world and beginning to feel the nervous energy that came with age. He'd begged his father for a stay in Lorien, in Rivendell, anywhere outside of their woods. And his father had granted him that permission.

The last time he'd visited Rivendell, Aragorn had not begun to live there. Now, the boy flitted down the hallways, trailing after Elrond when he could and dogging his brothers every time they returned home. Legolas had found his demeanor interesting, childish, had called to him on the first day, before he even knew his name.

"Little One!" His call echoed through the deserted clearing to where Aragorn sat, staring at his elvish home. The lad had turned to him, eyes bright, itching for an adventure.

And now that Legolas had his attention, he didn't quite know what he wanted to say. "Do you know how to shoot a bow? I am told that I am one of the best marksman among my people."

Estel had beamed with pleasure, happy for the distraction from his boredom, happier still for the attention. He'd come running up, all long legs and high expectations, and informed Legolas very quickly that his name was Aragorn, but he was called Estel.

"I am named Legolas." Legolas said easily, "And I am called Legolas."

Legolas didn't leave Rivendell for four months, and from then on spent ever increasing amounts of time with his newfound friend, up until this hunt, Aragorn's first official hunt. He'd been so proud that he and Legolas had been assigned a part in getting food for Elrond's enormous table. And then everything had gone so wrong.

Elves didn't sleep, but Legolas was jerked out of his reverie by the sounds of hooves, the strange, guttural cries of orcs. He and Estel were still tied to the tree, and Aragorn was shivering violently. From their low vantage point, their obscure position, they were in danger of being trampled to death in the middle of a rescue mission.

Legolas strained against his bonds, but no matter how he contorted he could not do more than loosen their grip around the sturdy tree. In no way could he shake such thick rope off. So he threw his body over Estel, protecting the man as best he could, and waited for the worst to be over.

It was Elrohir who cut their bonds, Elladan who stood by them, sword flashing, as Legolas massaged some feeling into his wrists and ankles, sore from after being bound for so long. "Take my horse!" Elrohir called, felling orc after orc with his blade, face shining with the mad exhilaration of battle.

Legolas didn't need to be told twice. He wavered for a moment, nearly collapsing under the burden of Aragorn's weight, having not eaten for several days, but rallied with the thought that they were both weak, and sitting ducks in the middle of a battle. He jumped nimbly onto the grey and white beauty of a horse, setting Aragorn carefully in front of him, and rode as fast as he could for home.

His oldest brother found him in the rain eight hours later, with a death grip on Estel, muttering soothing words to the horse but unable to muster the energy to get off of it and into the house of healing. And though he was eventually taken off the horse, none of the soothing words from his brothers could get him to release his grip on Estel.

Murmured words flew around Legolas, who was in pain, wet and cold and exhausted from the hard ride, not to mention hungrier than he could ever remember being. And in pain…

"They've both got fevers. Legolas' is higher, though."

"He has four broken ribs."

"The man-child has nine, but it's that cut --"

"On his head. _Ada_, can his mind be saved?"

And then, later, the steady, even voice of his father's most trusted advisor. "Calm yourself, Thranduril," Thranduril was his father's name, though his sons rarely remembered that, calling him either _Ada_ or _Enrai_ (King), "Legolas will awaken. The sons of Elrond are here to see the fate of the man-child Estel, not to watch your son drift into the next world."

But for a while, Legolas did hang on the knife's edge of reality, so deep was his exhaustion. When he did re-awaken, it was with his arms once again around the soft, warm body of Estel. And for the first time, he moved.

It wasn't just movement, though, not the flick of a wrist or the furrow of the brow. Estel began to struggle against Legolas so that, for the first time in days, or perhaps weeks, Legolas was forced to let go. "Shh…Estel, you're here with me. We're in my home. You are safe here." His throat burned as he said the words.

Estel's voice was also rubbed raw, like fish skin scraped until the scales peeled off, but his words were of more concern, "Please, don't hurt me…please…"

As if Legolas had ever hurt him before, ever hurt anyone so helpless in his life. Though Aragorn was still struggling, still writhing in the grip of whatever nightmare was plaguing him, Legolas managed to wrap his arms around the torso, managed, somehow, to hold on.

The tone was not beautiful, not perfect, and did nothing to soothe the fire in his throat, but Legolas began to hum the tune of a lay that Estel had always loved, stroked back his hair and held his face, careful not to press too hard on the numerous cuts and bruises that he wasn't supposed to know about.

"And don't hurt Legolas," Estel murmured into his shirt, "You can use me however you wish, just do not hurt _mi mellon_."

Legolas rocked with his friend until Aragorn stopped struggling, until the cries and pleas turned to whimpers, then sighs. He rocked until he could not remember the sight of a blade ripping into Aragorn's skin, until he could no longer recalled Aragorn's desperate cry to please, please hurt him instead.

*******

**A/N: (and we don't often do this, so just bear with us) The little drabbles are _supposed_ to contradict each other. Despite popular belief, we _did_ read the books and enjoyed the _immensely_, which is why we wrote this in the first place. Some of the facts we stretched: like the fact that Legolas has six brothers, when he was most likely an only child. Their ages. The length of the journey. But, overall, we think that this just adds to the mini stories, not detracts from them. Just in case you were confused about why there seemed to be an incredible amount of contradictory accounts.**

**Anyways, please review.**


	5. Frodo and Sam

**Frodo and Sam**

_"Now look here, Sir!"__He turned, facing up to Faramir with all the courage that he could muster.__  
__"Don't you go taking advantage of my master because his servant's__no better than a fool.__You've spoken very handsome all along, put me off my guard,__talking of Elves and all.__But handsome is as handsome does we say.__Now's a chance to show your quality." **Sam, The Two Towers**_

**#1: Leave**

"Don't you leave him Samwise Gamgee." When Gandalf spoke those words, he could not have known that Sam would live his life by them.

**#2: Mr. Frodo**

"You don't have to call me 'Mr. Frodo', Sam." Frodo was sitting on the garden wall that Sam had helped his Gaffer build when he was ten, and eating a strawberry from a bush Sam had tended to himself.

"I do, Mr. Frodo. It wouldn't be proper, like. You know how hobbits talk so." He smiled at the hobbit, twenty years old and only three years his senior. "Get off my wall."

**#3: Home**

It breaks Frodo's heart to think that Sam will never see the Shire again, never get married and have children that he would father so nicely, all because of him. But at the same time, there's a little part of him that knows that, if the end has to come, there was no one in the world he'd rather die with.

**#4: Birthdays**

Sam turned thirty-five while they were wandering through Mordor. They didn't notice, because days had begun to blend together long before the Fellowship took leave of each other. But if he had been in the proximity of a famously large Shire birthday cake, with its wishing candles, he would have wanted nothing more than to see Frodo smile again, because that Ring was too damn heavy for one tiny person to carry alone.

**#5: Relief**

During the tense months where Aragorn was just hoping Frodo and Sam were alive in that forsaken territory, all he could feel was relief that Sam had chosen to follow his master, because with Sam around, Frodo would have someone to live for.

**#6: Eagles**

When the eagles come at the End of All Things, they pick Frodo up first, or try to. In the end, both took off together, because Frodo wouldn't, couldn't, let go of the person he owed his life to.

**#7: Children**

"I wanted to name him Frodo." Sam explained, sitting in the living room at Bag End and not quite meeting Frodo's eyes.

"I'm flattered, Sam." And he really was, because if he respected and loved anyone in this corrupt, warring world, it was Samwise Gamgee.

Except Sam didn't meet his eyes, and Frodo suddenly became grave, fearing the worst. After all, even young hobbit maidens had lost babies during birth. "You see, Mr. Frodo….Rosie had a little girl."

And that might have been the hardest Frodo had laughed in…oh, years and years.

**#8: Injured**

After getting whacked in the head by that goblin in Moria, Sam had tried to downplay it, out of reverence to Gandalf's memory, out of unwillingness to cause the Fellowship to slow down because of him, but mostly because he didn't want Frodo to worry.

**#9: Capture**

When Frodo was captured, he couldn't think about the loss of the Ring in terms of the world, of men and dwarves and hobbits and elves who would die under Sauron's reign. All he could think about was that he'd let Sam down, and he could never make that better.

**#10: Music**

Sam was much smarter than he let on, and though he was more than happy to hide his talents, even little Pippin, with his voice like a dove, had to admit that Sam's lilting whistle had the energy to brighten up even the darkest mines of Moria.

**#11: Belief**

Legolas believed in the balance between nature and the beings who took from it. Gimli believed in karma, where good deeds meant a bright future and cowardly, dishonorable ones were bad luck. Boromir and Aragorn both believed, to some degree, in the Gods of man, the Gods who had, supposedly, created all of Middle-Earth. Gandalf believed in human nature, and was constantly weighing Might vs. Right, though he still believed that there was something, somewhere, that was making sense of the chaos in the world.

The Shirelings had no religion of their own, no weekly meetings to pray or cry or shout, just gardening and hospitality and morality and a sense of duty. And if Sam believed in anything, it was Frodo.

**#12: Losing Battle**

"Do not die on me, Samwise." Aragorn breathed, but Sam was so tiny on the hospital bed, burned and bloodied and thin and dirty. He pumped the chest, right above where he knew the heart was. "You will not die on me!"

Sam couldn't die, because if (_when_) Frodo awoke from his own near-death experience, Aragorn could not bear to explain why he'd fallen asleep with Sam at his side and woken to find him suddenly beyond his reach.

**#13: Cloak**

Maybe Frodo will never understand why when he wakes up Sam's coat is draped over his shivering body, and Sam will never tell him it's because, between the two of them, he'll always think that Frodo needs it more.

**#14: Phobia**

"Why didn't you just tell me, Sam?" Frodo's voice was kind, soft, considerate as he knelt next to Sam, his arms all but around his friend, his partner.

"I couldn't, Mr. Frodo." Sam looked up at the sky and winced, then jumped, "It just isn't natural for a grown hobbit to be afraid of a little thunder."

**#15: Snow**

Pippin was the happiest when he found out the use of snowballs half-way up the first of the Misty Mountains, but Sam will never forget Frodo's face, standing in the center of a valley of white, a look of pure joy written in every one of his features.

**#16: Protector**

Neither could quite pinpoint the moment when Sam first became Frodo's minder, but Aragorn thought it had something to do with Prancing Ponies and Dark Riders. He still remembered the sight of Sam, tiny fists raised as if he had any chance of a fight, and probably, even knowing the odds, willing to have a go anyway.

**#17: Herbs**

Sam called it gardening, Legolas called it botany, but Frodo was glad to see that his friend had someone more than three feet tall to talk to on the journey.

**#18: Ale**

It was after a long night in the Green Dragon that Sam admitted he liked Rosie Cotton. "Do you think I'm mad for going after her?"

"Well, it's only you and every other man in the Shire." Merry pointed out.

"You have as much chance as the next hobbit." Pippin added helpfully, before Merry glared at him, reminding his cousin that he was still too young to be drinking in public, and shouldn't he just keep his mouth shut?

"Well, I think it's great, Sam." Frodo took another swig of ale, which he'd always regret later. "I think my biggest crush was on Uncle's old book from the elves." And he hadn't been entirely joking, but that didn't mean the others had to laugh _quite_ that long.

**#19: Gone**

It doesn't matter that he already has three children, when Rosie loses her baby and nearly dies herself, it's Frodo who is there to comfort Sam, to remind him that not everything is his life is gone, yet.

**#20: Haven**

When Sam finally landed in the Grey Havens and saw Frodo waiting for him at the dock, foot swinging lazily, pipe in his mouth, book tucked under one arm, Sam couldn't do anything but smile, because this had to be the best life, or death, ever got.

**#21: Proposition**

The offer sits, cold and heavy in the air, and Frodo has to turn away from the King, from Strider, his brain running a thousand miles a minute. Him, a diplomat? Him, an insignificant Shireling, helping a whole country, a whole world, repair itself? But slowly, as he turns back to Aragorn, the realization comes that Sam would never stay in a land of rocks and sand, and he didn't want to be anyplace that Sam wasn't.

**#22: Stay**

He did think, for a long time, about staying in the Shire. Frodo had, after all, survived five years after the final breaking of the Fellowship. He could have left for the white shore right after the journey, and in fact the only thing that kept him in that world was the familiar, comforting hand on his shoulder, begging him to stay for a little while longer.

**#23: Sober**

Pippin didn't have a long enough attention span to be interested in seriously drinking. Merry was perhaps the least indulgent of the four, mostly because he felt overly responsible for his young cousin, and always made sure he was sober enough to walk Pippin back home. Frodo liked to watch Sam drink himself into oblivion while trying to impress Rosie, because when he put the bigger hobbit to bed in Bag End to sleep off the effects, he gets to listen to Sam mutter love poems to a certain bartender in his sleep.

**#24: Stars**

"What do you think is up there, Sam?" Frodo pointed at the star field arrayed far above the smoke and fumes of Mordor.

Sam glanced upward and shrugged, "Begging your pardon, Mr. Frodo, but I don't think that's for us to know quite yet, if you follow my meaning."

Frodo regarded his friend with a new measure of curiosity and respect. "Perhaps you're sight, Sam…"

**#25: Silence**

Whenever Sam disagrees with Frodo, he gets quiet and doesn't quite meet Frodo's eye. Frodo just wishes that Sam would tell him what's wrong, so he can do everything in his power to fix it.

**#26: Journey Home**

It was Sam's utter faith in their continued existence that got Frodo up the mountain in the first place, so when the younger hobbit stares at him, eyes serious, exhausted, and says, "I don't think there will be a journey home, Mr. Frodo." Well, that about breaks his heart.

**#27: Lonely**

Sometimes, when Sam is off looking for something --- anything --- to eat, and Frodo is left to watch over their packs and camp, he gets so lonely his throat closes up. It's not just that there's no Sam, it's that there is nothing alive, _nothing_.

And suddenly Sam is there, holding him, reassuring him that he is not completely alone, and it's suddenly easier to breathe.

**#30: Injured**

Frodo lost a finger, broke three ribs, six toes, four fingers, and sustained more cuts and bruises than he cared to count. Sam split his foot opened on a submerged rock, got a gash in his head deep enough to become an everlasting scar, and was stabbed in the back by an orc-blade. When they woke up in that white, white room, with Gandalf at their side, they both suspected that they were dead. After all, who were they to deserve to live?

**#28: Good**

"There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."

That's what Sam said, but what he meant was he needed Frodo to stay alive, because how could he ever go back to the Shire without his best friend?

**#29: Broken**

No matter how many times Aragorn reassures him that Frodo would be okay, Sam cannot believe it until he sees his master jolt back to life, his own name issuing from the other hobbit's lips.

**#30: Empathy**

Frodo doesn't know how Sam does it, but every time he's frightened, or upset, or lonely, Sam's hand is always there, his eyes always asking him if he is okay.

**#31: Leadership**

Whenever the Fellowship looks at Frodo and expects him to make all those huge decisions --- decisions too big to lay on a hobbit his size --- Sam could only look on, fume, and wait it out, hoping that Frodo makes the right decision, hoping they'll live through the next step.

**#32: He's Dead**

"He's dead." For some reason, Frodo feels tears come to his eyes, even though the last time he saw Boromir the man had tried to take the Ring from him by force. But knowing that his younger brother was mourning him, knowing that he wasn't out there, fighting, helping…somehow, that made some small part of himself shrivel up. And a familiar hand was once again inside of his.

**#33: Miles**

They measured the distance by the changing of the stars, of the scenery, of the feel of the land beneath their feet, but that didn't change the fact that the miles were slipping by too slowly, that their tiny legs weren't taking them far enough fast enough, that they may not make it in time. But they had to get there, eventually, because Sam knew that if the Ring wasn't off of Frodo's neck sooner rather than later Frodo would eventually get far ahead of him, behind him, to a place Sam couldn't follow.

**#34: Betrayed**

He doesn't dwell on the day when Frodo turned to him, told him to go home. He doesn't like to remember the sinking feeling in his heart, the cold detachment in Frodo's eyes. But his master wasn't in his right mind, so it wasn't really a betrayal. Still, that doesn't change the fact that he doesn't think about it, that they never talk about it…

**#35: Three's a Crowd**

"I don't trust him."

"He wants the Ring, that's all he cares about."

Well, that was one thing that Sam never wanted to be right about.

**#36: Funeral**

"It wasn't your fault, Frodo." But Merry's voice was tired, as if he'd repeated this line too many times, to Strider, to Gimli and Legolas and Gandalf and Faramir. "It wasn't your fault."

But standing over Pippin's grave, Frodo could only think that if he'd gotten to the mountain sooner, this never would have happened. He could never justify splitting up Merry and Pippin, who were both so alive, so vital, so energetic when together. Apart…well, it was like he'd cut out a half of his friend by killing their cousin.

Later that night, as they walked home in the dreary fog, Frodo reached for Sam's hand in the dark. "Don't ever leave me, Sam."

**#37: Conversation**

Gimli is proud to say that he knows very little about other races, hobbits included, but even after months of traveling with them, he still cannot understand how Frodo and Sam can have an entire conversation in just one glance.

**#38: Smile**

When in Mordor, Frodo smiles so rarely that Sam has taken it upon himself to do anything he can to make sure he keeps that expression, and if that means reciting a poem in the voices of all the members of the Fellowship…well, so be it.

**#39: Dreams**

For those terrible nights in the caves, Sam had dreams of Frodo, always of Frodo, of him being stabbed in the heart, bashed through the head, crushed in a troll's giant fist. He tells himself it's only a dream, but he knows he's just lying to himself.

When they begin the battle beneath Moria, Sam is always within reach of Frodo, just in case, and when an axe comes whipping at the hobbit's head, he doesn't think, he just reacts.

Aragorn patches him up, tells him that worse has happened to people slaying their first orc, and Sam just keeps quiet, never mentioning that if he hadn't managed to kill the orc, he would have taken as many blows as was necessary to keep Frodo alive.

**#40: Hostility**

"Tell me where he is or I swear I'll make you." Sam shoved Sting under the orc's face, eyes and tone hard, meaning every word. He'd do whatever it took to find Frodo, who was here, somewhere, tortured, injured, sick, maybe dead. He'd do anything. He had to.

**#41: When**

They began making a list throughout their journey. When they get home, they'd sleep for a week, and never leave the Shire, or they'd travel to Rivendell and learn elvish, or meet up with Gimli in the halls of Moria. They'd make sure that Merry and Pippin remembered how to laugh, and that Aragorn marries Arwen. They'd eat a thousand strawberries, a hundred bushels of apples, and all the meat they could find, not to mention quaff at least thirty gallons of ale.

When they got home, they would never know exhaustion, or hunger, or pain. When they got home, they'd be happy.

**#42: Insults**

"They're so small." If Sam had a pint for every time he heard those words, he'd be a very drunk man. But he could stand them for longer than most. He wasn't proud enough to fight every time he heard an insult tossed his way.

But he was too loyal to let such things be said against his master. He stumbled away from a fight against four of Faramir's men, bruised and bloodied but with his dignity and that of Frodo's intact.

**#43: Memories**

Sometimes, when Golum was messing with both their heads and the sun was shining too hot to look straight towards the horizon, it seemed as if there was no more worth in the world, nothing except their memories of a better past, a happier past.

**#44: Hallucination**

He's an old man, an old hobbit who believes he can still ride horses and hoe a straight line. When he tumbles over the edge of one of the walls of the citadel, there is no one around to hear one of his ribs puncture his lung to rest directly above his heart.

A hand comes down on his shoulder and he looks up at Frodo, sadly smiling. "My dear Sam, what mess have you got yourself in this time?"

"I missed you." Sam manages to croak, not realizing the full truth of the words until he speaks them aloud.

Frodo touches his hot face, covered in a sheen of sweat. "Shh…" he warns, then smiles broader, "I've missed you, too."

"You shouldn't be here." He doesn't want to move, doesn't want to breathe in case it makes Frodo leave, back into the Grey Havens or his own mind. Desperate tears well in his eyes, though he can't tell if they're from pain or from relief.

"But I am."

"Am I going to die?" For some reason, Sam isn't upset at this notion. He'd been ready for death since Rosie had been taken from him a year ago. His children, all of them at least partly grown, were taking care of each other and the gardens, leaving Sam to visit Gondor, as he'd been trying to do for years. He'd heard Legolas and Gimli would be there, that they had built a boat that would sail to the Grey Havens in a month. He'd been waiting to go on that boat, wanting to see Frodo so much.

"Not yet. Not if I can stop it."

Blood was slowly covering Sam's tunic, Frodo's hand. "I want to stay with you, Mr. Frodo."

"And I, you, Sam, but not yet. Not now. We'll see each other soon, and have forever to spend together."

Sam smiles at the thought, then gasps in pain as something inside him slips, puncturing, ripping, tearing.

"Hold on." Frodo murmurs, suffering as he watches Sam suffer. "They're coming. Hold on."

"I. Am. Trying."

Pippin is the first one at Sam's side, agile even pushing a hundred. Aragorn is nearby, summoned by the cries of a concerned hobbit. Neither questions the smile of Sam's face, his repetition of a single name. Frodo. He'd always wished for Frodo.

"I'll see you soon, Samwise Gamgee." And then Frodo disappears, again.

**#45: Cry**

It doesn't matter if they'd been walking for two days, if he was sore or injured or exhausted, every time Frodo cried, Sam would curl up next to him and try to make everything seem alright.

**#46: Friendship**

It started when they were children, and Sam would teach him the names of every plant under the sun, even if he had to make up half. Frodo, for his part, would read poems until Sam knew them by rote. It quickly evolved into lunch and tea time and supper spent together, with Frodo seeking Sam out at any job he happened to be at. Evenings were spent at the Green Dragon or traversing the mountains with Frodo's energetic cousins. Somewhere in those years of being together, they had become each others' best friends.

**#47: Moment**

Looking out over the citadel, at the beautiful sunset glowing over the towers and the shouts and cheers of the victorious men below, Frodo thought it couldn't get any better than this, at this moment, but then he remembers that he's alive, and his cousins and Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli and even Gandalf are alive. He remembers that Sam is alive, and suddenly the moment gets even better.

**#48: Climb**

It didn't matter that it took them thirteen months from start to finish, or that Frodo had to give up his finger and most of his sanity in the process. The world is still humming along, Sam is still alive and whole, and that is worth the climb.

**#49: Green**

When they get back to the Shire, to Bag End, the first thing Sam does is promise that, before he does anything else, get married or even return home, he would make sure that Frodo's garden is green again, and nothing Frodo says will get the stubborn look off his face.

**#50: Love**

"I'm glad you're with me, Sam, here at the End of All Things." They put their heads together, hiding from the fire, the lava, the noise, and Sam realizes that he's happy, too, because he loves Frodo too much to let him die alone.

***

**Same rules apply: when you review, just name your favorite(s) and we'll tally the votes and write another one-shot "interlude", expanding on any one drabble.**

**Of course, the most important part of that is review_._**


	6. Interlude III

**#39: Dreams**

_For those terrible nights in the caves, Sam had dreams of Frodo, always of Frodo, of him being stabbed in the heart, bashed through the head, crushed in a troll's giant fist. He tells himself it's only a dream, but he knows he's just lying to himself._

_When they begin the battle beneath Moria, Sam is always within reach of Frodo, just in case, and when an axe comes whipping at the hobbit's head, he doesn't think, he just reacts._

_Aragorn patches him up, tells him that worse has happened to people slaying their first orc, and Sam just keeps quiet, never mentioning that if he hadn't managed to kill the orc, he would have taken as many blows as was necessary to keep Frodo alive._

"Sam!" Tiny hands grab onto his waistcoat and tug, pulling him bodily from the arms of sleep. Sam woke with a start, automatically flailing to get his arms raised. He struck out blindly…

"Oh," the strange, soft sigh as the air went out of someone's body and then Sam's hand was caught again, this time by a slightly bigger hand.

"I swear I'll knock you, Samwise Gamgee." Merry was no scarier than when he was defending his younger cousin, and Sam was immediately contrite. "And don't be too much louder…you'll wake Frodo."

The last thing Sam wanted was to wake Frodo, who'd been getting heavy circles beneath his eyes for some time now, whose hands kept straying to the chain around his neck, fingering the Ring endlessly, who seemed so much more distant than just a few months ago in the Shire. No, he wouldn't wake Frodo, not after he'd just found sleep.

"If you are going to insist on talking," said Gimli gruffly from his watch post at the entrance of the tunnel, "Move."

Sam didn't particularly want to continue talking. He'd finally managed to fall asleep in these awful caves when Pippin had woken him up. The Big Folk had to keep crouching to go through the tunnels, but the hobbits and Gimli didn't have to even bend their backs. But physical exertion wasn't Sam's problem – he was plenty tired. The caves just gave him such feelings, like danger was lurking every time he turned his back. He kept the sword he'd won from the Barrow-Downs close at hand. Just in case.

Even though he didn't want to follow the younger hobbits out of the circle, he knew that there was no way he'd get to sleep anyway. He carefully stepped over Frodo's prone body to sit cross-legged with Merry and Pippin.

"You having nightmares, Sam?" Pippin's eyes were round as saucers and Sam thought, not for the first time, that Little Pip shouldn't be on this mission. He'd known Pippin since the Took could fit into his arms, knew that a Quest of darkness and danger, while appealing to the Tween's sense of adventure, was really no place for the peaceful, fun-loving youngster.

But he couldn't deny the dreams and nodded wearily. Yes, the dreams were another reason he couldn't get more than a short nap. Always the same, with a glinting knife being thrust into Strider's stomach, Legolas' back, Pippin's leg…Frodo's heart. Always with Sam standing there, too dumb to do much of anything.

"Pip noticed." Merry said quietly, and Sam turned to him. He'd always liked Merry, finding him a kindred spirit. While Frodo was constantly in search of adventures, of knowledge, and Pippin was a right bundle of energy at times, Merry could sometimes be convinced to sit down and spend the day chewing the fat while Sam pulled weeds from Bag End's garden. "You know, Night Sprites can't catch you if you sleep with other hobbits. We're too strong for them."

"Do you think so, Mr. Merry?" Sam asked, amused by the strong assertation. But there was no denying that he was tired, and an evening being plagued by nightmares was not Sam's idea of a good rest. Pippin patted the spot next to him, his tiny hand perhaps a quarter of the size of one of the Big Folk's.

Sam retrieved his sleeping blanket from the other side of Frodo and lowered himself squarely between Merry and Pippin. He was happier than he could voice when Little Pip grabbed one of his hands and squeezed it tight. "Don't worry, Sam, the Night Sprites will eat Merry before they get to us."

And, finally, Sam fell to sleep, forgetting about the disturbing dreams, where Frodo was skewered with a troll's blade.

.***.

The battle was blinding, confusing. Sam didn't know which way to turn, because there was no place where a sword or axe or spear wasn't being thrust into the fray. He just kept an eye on Frodo, like that children's game of watching the pea-pod even after it disappeared under the cup and was shuffled around. Though the setting changed, he had to focus on Frodo…he'd promised Gandalf.

He spun and swerved, thanking God and Boromir for sparring with him all those long nights on the trek up the Misty Mountains. Muscle memory did exist – he ducked a split-second before he even registered the anvil swinging through the air, dodged before the heavy pieces of brisk shrapnel hurtled past his head.

With a deft swing he poked the troll's arm, the one reaching for Little Pip. Sam remembered when they were younger, when Pippin would seek him out when Merry and Frodo went to visit older relatives and he wasn't allowed to come because he was the baby. Sam had showed him azaleas and anemones and asters and soon enough the young hobbit was mesmerized enough by the colors to forget what he was crying about.

Now the same young hobbit was hovering next to Legolas, his small hand patting the elf's cheek anxiously even as he tried desperately to stop the bleeding.

"Mr. Frodo…" Sam was running at a crouch, trying to block out the screams and roars, the symphony of battle. The dream that had cursed him until the night before was coming back to him in bits and pieces. "Mr. Frodo!" Shouting now, stumbling blindly…

"Sam!" The shout from Merry was all the warning Sam had to throw himself out of the way of the boulders raining down from above. Merry and Boromir had found a high perch and were hurling boulders on the cave troll bellow even as they fought off goblin attackers.

Coughing now from the dust in his lungs, completely unable to see, Sam ran dazedly through the cave, sword flicking out at random to catch an enemy in the chest, the shoulder. He just hoped that he had wits and luck enough to refrain from hitting a Fellowship member.

The sound of Gandalf's mutterings sped Sam along. He'd always been the slightest bit afraid of the old wizard and, occasionally, would wonder if he entirely had wits enough to be performing spells strong enough to send the whole of the mines toppling on their heads.

"Mr. Frodo!"

It was Sting that found Frodo for him. The blue light stood out in the semi-darkness and urged Sam forward even as an orc's hand, firmly grasping a sword, aimed directly for Frodo's heart.

If Sam knew what he knew later – that Frodo was wearing a vest of _mithril_, that he would have been winded by the blow, nothing more, he _still_ would have thrown himself in front of the sword. He was Frodo's protector. He'd been around for thirty years to make sure that his occasionally-scatter-brained master didn't kill himself. You couldn't just turn that kind of thing off and on.

He hit Frodo's shoulder and the two tumbled, legs tangling on the downward descent. Sam felt something press white-hot to his lower back, but worse was the crushing impact that drove the breath from his body. The jolt of hitting the ground left Sam dazed for seconds that soon passed into a minute.

"Sam!" Something in Frodo's high, frightened voice made Sam open an eye dutifully. As soon as he did Frodo sighed happily, a sound that would become so familiar to the faithful servant in the months to come, as were the words following it. "My dear Sam. Did you throw yourself in the path of a sword to save little old me?"

Groans around them signaled the end of the battle as Fellowship members hobbled together, checking over wounds and watching warily as goblins and orcs retreated back into their caves. Legolas had blood on his scalp, stark against his white-blond hair. Aragorn was touching the wound carefully even as the elf flicked him away. "Never mind. We need to leave."

Sam didn't know if he could walk, let alone keep up with the pace set by the Fellowship in motion. He grabbed his pack and hoisted it over his shoulder, breathing in to will the pain away, out to help him balance. "Sam?" The question came from Frodo, and Sam managed a smile that didn't look too much like a grimace.

The run to the bridge was terrifying for everyone else, but for Sam it was simply nauseating. He kept repeating a mantra of _one more step, one more…_At one point, he was being forcibly dragged across the floor by Boromir, across the bridge spanning a river of churning lava.

They left Gandalf behind. The old wizard had been flitting in and out of Frodo's and, though it, Sam's life since the beginning. Watching the grey traveler fall into darkness, a sacrifice in desperate hope that they might live, was almost too painful to bear.

Emotional agony was something Sam was not familiar with, and he soon found that it trumped the pain of the steadily bleeding wound, the cracked ribs. Gandalf? Gone? He dealt with the realization the only way he knew how – by going to Frodo.

It seemed that his friend had shared his sentiment. Gandalf deserved to be mourned, deserved more than what the hobbits could give him in the middle of the mountains, but the Quest and the Ring must be finished if Gandalf was ever to be given the tribute he merited.

The slow march through the woods was more of a stumble as the exhausted, hungry, distraught eight picked their way along the path. They were lucky they weren't being followed – their normal system of careful watchers in the front and rear of the group was in shambles. But for the hours following the battle in the mines of Moria, they weren't set upon by their enemies.

Just after the sun dipped below the horizon, Merry's high, concerned voice broke the mostly-still air of the evening. He was bent over Pippin, who could not find it in him to move another foot. "We'll rest here for the night." Aragorn said, picking up Pippin easily and setting him next to the fire Boromir was creating. "Let me see your injury, _mellon_."

Sam was stroking Pippin's back, trying to coax the younger hobbit into sleep, when Aragorn spotted the blood, blooming across Sam's back. "Samwise Gamgee," he murmured, "let me look at you." This was late into the evening, when even Legolas had succumbed to that strange sleep of the elves.

Aragorn could not find sleep in him, not that night, not for many nights to come. His entire life contained snippets of Gandalf Greyhame. The old, slightly paranoid wizard had been his main guide through adolescence. They would often go years without seeing or hearing from each other, but knowing that Gandalf was no longer alive nagged at something in the Ranger, something that said _this isn't right_.

And now he had a chance to do something with his hands, with this young hobbit in front of him, blood soaking into his clothes, into the ground. "Were you injured in battle?"

Sam nodded slowly, eyes aimed at the ground. He knew that there were more important things to be worrying about than this small injury.

Aragorn pealed back the clothing and found that it was no small injury. The wound cut from an inch left of the spine and around his side and was deeper than any gouge Aragorn had seen in recent memory. "Does it pain you?" Aragorn was surprised that the hobbit had been able to walk at all. This kind of injury usually disabled a man.

Sam shrugged, then coughed, embarrassed. "Not…not as much as my front." Sam turned slightly, so that Aragorn could see his bare chest. It was one large bruise, in ugly shades of blue and purple and, in some spots, deep black.

Carefully, carefully, Aragorn pressed his fingers into certain spots, certain places he knew as likely to be broken. When a hiss and jerk came from his patient he knew that Sam had suffered at least three broken ribs, perhaps four. "Did you fall?"

Again, Sam nodded, his hand rubbing small circles on his chest. "After the orc slashed me."

Trying not to betray his worry over the severity of the wound and, most of all, the sheer amount of blood that covered Sam's clothes, Aragorn said, "Worse has happened to warriors facing their first orc."

Sam knew he wasn't a warrior and said as much, stammering as he did so. Aragorn was a warrior, so were Legolas and Gimli and Boromir. Gandalf was even a warrior, as he could be fearsome when he wanted to. Even Frodo and Merry and Little Pip had it in them to be good soldiers.

"'Twas just a dream I had. I already knew what would happen, Strider, I was just doing all I could to prevent it, if you follow."

Strider did follow. He also knew that Sam needed a full night's rest, more water than they had, and herbs he should have carried on him. Feeling the body under his hands trembling from the stress of the day, the extent of the injuries, Aragorn said, slowly, "You, Samwise Gamgee, are perhaps the greatest warrior I've had the pleasure of meeting in my lifetime, which has been considerably longer than most.

"You see, the best warriors are those who don't even know they are one."

**Next, because of this cool voting review system we have going, is going be 50 of Boromir's best moments. Who would have guessed the guy was so popular?**

**Anyways, please review**


	7. Boromir

**Boromir and Everyone**

_**Boromir: **Have you ever seen it, Aragorn? The White Tower of Ecthelion, glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver, its banners caught high in the morning breeze. Have you ever been called home by the clear ringing of silver trumpets?_  
_**Aragorn:** I have seen the White City, long ago._  
_**Boromir:** One day, our paths will lead us there and the tower guard will take up the call: The Lords of Gondor have returned. _**  
**

**#1: Brothers**

Ever since he was young he has known that he was the Golden Boy and Faramir…wasn't. There were times where Boromir, in a fit of adolescent naughtiness, had pinned some of his more questionable crimes on his younger brother. And Faramir had taken it all, and still looked at Boromir like the sun rose and set on him every day.

That's why he went on the journey of the Ring. Not for his father, or for Gondor, but for that little spark in his baby brother's eyes, assuring him that he was something special.

**#2: Experience**

He was the only member of the Fellowship with a younger brother. Aragorn grew up with the elves of Rivendell and was unofficially the youngest of the four, Legolas was the youngest of seven, Gimli the youngest of three. Most of the hobbits were only children. And Gandalf…well, Boromir was fuzzy on the exact origins of wizards.

Maybe that's what made him so good with the little hobbits, because for all of their tom-foolery and mischief were genuinely _good_ people. In his mind, all four names of the hobbits became synonymous with Faramir.

Perhaps that was why he tried his utmost to protect them. He couldn't imagine Faramir experiencing the horrors of war. Why should these hobbits have to do the same?

**#3: Questions**

"Hullo, Faramir." Boromir knelt down until he was level with his brother, five years his junior. "Do you know how old you are today?"

Faramir scrunched up his face and gazed at his fingers, counting them carefully, seriously. "One…two…tree! I'm tree!" Boromir laughed and hugged the tot, pulling him up into the air.

Faramir patted Boromir's hair with his hands as they walked through the Citadel. "Bo? How old do I has to be afore I'm older than you?"

How do you explain age and mathematics to a child? "Little one, you can never be older than I. I'll always be your big brother." Borormir hugged Faramir hard, "I'll always be around to take care of you."

**#4: Promise Unfulfilled**

Faramir watched his brother's body slowly move down the stream. He snagged from the boat the horn he'd always been so jealous of but nothing else. He wouldn't bury the body of his brother so far from home. Pain had not yet touched him, nor grief. He felt just a profound sense of emptiness, of loss, as he'd felt for days now. "I thought you'd always be around to care for me, brother."

The small ship continued its journey, and Faramir could only kneel in the river and cry.

**#5: Give**

"Here." Boromir gave Frodo the last of his salted meat. "I will go hunting tomorrow. Split this between you."

He walked away before he could see the gratitude on the faces of four little ones that should never have gone hungry.

**#6: Take**

He did go hunting, on the bank of the Anduin with Legolas. The elf moved soundlessly beside him, something Boromir had thought he'd gotten used to during their long journey. He concluded that he would never be used to elves. Borormir sensed a movement to his left and shot without thinking. A half-second later, Legolas did the same thing.

They didn't talk as they stood over their kill, a young doe, a fat doe. Boromir dropped to the ground and began taking strips of bark and leaves to transport the kill back to their camp. As he went, he murmured a soft prayer for the soul of the creature, to ensure it would find its way into the afterlife.

When he looked up, he saw the elf looking at him strangely. "I have never seen a man praise the meat he has killed."

Boromir harrumphed. He knew that elves thought they had the market cornered on sentimentality, "Sorry to disappoint." But a smile flitted across Legolas' face, and somehow Boromir was wearing one of his own.

**#7: Pride**

Boromir was a proud man. He was proud that he could shoot straight and ride well and hold his liquor. He was proud that he could dance beautifully and sing well enough to make ladies swoon. He was proud he could fight his foes and defend his honor. He was proud that he was able to be in the Fellowship.

Most of all, Boromir was proud that he could protect his brother.

**#8: Consequences**

"Father, will Faramir be joining us for supper?" Boromir finally worked up the courage to ask halfway through the second course. His father didn't even look up from his meal.

"Faramir has disgraced me in front of a trader. He will not receive his supper until he has learned to be respectful to his betters."

Boromir had to bite his tongue to keep from retorting that his shy, polite little brother would never have dishonored their father by being rude to his guests. He couldn't even say that it was wrong for a four-year-old boy to be denied supper, because his father glared at him coolly until Boromir bent his head down to his food, vision swimming with tears.

**#9: Bond**

It took Boromir twenty minutes of searching before he found Faramir in one of the inner courtyards. The doors had been barred and the young boy was trapped in the small, grassy area, curled in a ball against a corner to escape the cold.

Boromir shook his little brother until he blinked sleepily, yawning to reveal a pink tongue, a small double-row of baby teeth. Without question, Faramir draped his arms over Boromir's shoulders and let his older brother carry him into the house.

"I tried to be good, Bo, but father got mad at me when I talked to the man." The drowsy voice made Boromir's heart clench painfully. "And I is hungry now." And cold, soaked through, on his way to a fever. Boromir wrapped his arms more securely around the little boy in his arms, promising himself that this would never happen again.

**#10: Words**

"Uruktharban?" Boromir repeated incredulously as Araogrn explained the plan. "We cannot possibly go through _there_."

Gimli's head jerked up at the old word. "How do you know Uruktharban? Even most dwarves today call it Khazad-dum."

Boromir hadn't even known that the word he'd used was outdated. "My father did a lot of trading with dwarves. I picked up on some of the language." He thought for a moment, then let out a line of guttural syllables that made sense only to Gimli.

"Ah! Finally, someone who can speak my own _aglab_, my language. You're accent it terrible but _felek-ghan_, you will get better."

And that's how Gimli learned to trust Boromir.

**#11: Betrayal**

He had never wanted a lot of power. He just wanted power enough o preserve his way of life, and wasn't that a noble thing? Wouldn't that help people beyond himself, beyond little Frodo and this strange little ring?

So he attempted to take the Ring, because otherwise it would never go to Gondor, to his dying culture and dying people. Boromir was doing his duty, because as any good commander knew, the good of the many outweighed the good of the few. Or the one.

**#12: Wizard**

Boromir wasn't sure if Gandalf ever really trusted him, and if he bought his way into the old man's heart at all, it was because of little Frodo and the other hobbits.

He didn't know what it was about the tiny folk that made him think of his own brother and the children he'd seen in Gondor. Perhaps it was the way Pippin rubbed his eyes with his balled fist when he was getting tired of walking, or the small weight of Merry in his arms on the days the snow was simply over the little folk's heads, or the way Sam and Frodo tried to be independent, older, but still enjoyed tackling the Gondorian to the ground during their sword-training sessions.

And Gandalf would just watch on and, sometimes, very rarely, he would smile.

**#13: Children**

In Gondor there were children. Small ones for the most part, scavengers, orphans, darting to and fro through the tiers of the citadel. They would always stop in their tracks when they saw young Boromir come towards them, then smile happily and run into his arms or on his back or follow him through the streets, because Boromir gave them food and small toys, distractions to their dismal lives.

Because really, in his heart of hearts, Boromir was one of the good guys.

**#14: Emotion**

When little Pip climbed into his lap and hugged him, his weight barely registering to Boromir, and promised, softly, to be his little brother, if he wanted, all Boromir could do was hug back, fiercely, protectively, all too aware of the fragile life in his arms, so like his little brother and so fundamentally different.

**#15: Trust**

"The outer section of Osgiliath burned yesterday." The squire knelt before Boromir's father, covered in soot and coughing, "They are in need of aid, and shelter…" He trailed off, cowering as the Steward stared, then listed all the reasons why aid would be unwise for a country in need of funds.

And Boromir, seven, watching from the sides, learned never to trust his father again.

**#16: Learn**

Boromir was skilled with a blade and bow, combat and diplomacy, but he had never understood the subtle differences between edible food and their poisonous kin.

Watching the hobbits snake through the bushes larger than themselves, picking berries seemingly at random and grinning up at the big man as they ate handfuls of the food, Boromir knew he had a lot to learn.

**#17: Too Late**

Of all the people in the Fellowship, Boromir had known Gandalf for the shortest time. He'd known the wizard as _Mithrandir_, who used to come into the city with vague prophesies of a King who would take his father's throne, of a war that would turn the world upside-down. When he was a lad, Mithrandir would look at him and tut to himself, saying that Boromir's fate was not yet sealed, he could prove himself worthy yet.

So when the old man fell in Khazad-dum, it was Boromir who began leading away from the crags, Boromir who took out the bandages and patched up his friends, Boromir who watched, detached, as the Fellowship crumbled around him. Because Boromir would be strong, even if it was too late, perhaps, to change his fate.

**#18: Duty**

"Brother," Faramir catches up with Boromir in the courtyard, clutching at the older boy's sleeve and flinching when the teen turned around.

"What, Fare?" Boromir cups the ten-year-old's chin and examines his bruised face, bleeding mouth. "Are you alright? Do you need me to walk you to the healer's?"

Faramir blanched at the thought of an escort. "No, Bo." Faramir said quickly, using the childhood nick-name, "I thank you, brother, for intervening when you did. I will repay you…"

Here is where Boromir touches his younger brother's bleeding lips, "Little brother, there is nothing to _repay_ between us. And there never will be." Boromir tousled the soft brown locks, "I'm just doing my job."

**#19: Peace**

Legolas didn't trust him, and that probably had something to do with a teenaged Boromir pushing Aragorn off the fourth level of the citadel years back. So Boromir danced cautiously around the elf, almost never speaking directly to the oldest member of the Fellowship.

It was the hobbits. For some reason, it always seemed to come back to the hobbits. When Legolas saw how gentle Boromir was being with the small folk, talking to them and laughing and helping them learn to spar, and spar well, the old elf softened, and one night he came over to Boromir and sat down beside him as the man tried to re-bandage a wound he'd sustained in the flight from the mines.

"Let me help….I have some herbs." And Legolas' hands were impossibly gentle, his medicines incredibly soothing. The beginning of the peace between them, a peace that would last until Boromir's death.

**#20: Worth**

He wanted to give the hobbits a fighting chance, especially Pippin, little Pip, who had offered to be his little brother, who had squirmed onto his lap and into the hearts of every member of the Fellowship.

So he jumped to their defense, even though it was suicide, even though he knew that the hobbits would likely be captured anyway, because after the day he'd had, after Frodo, he needed to prove that he was still worthy of the Fellowship.

**#21: Fellowship**

It was an odd word, really, one that wasn't quite the same as _friendship_, more like _mutual business partners_, really.

Except they weren't.

The four hobbits were already friends, bubbly, bouncy tykes who were as liable to hug each other as they were to tackle each other to the ground. Legolas and Aragorn were quiet, close, like brothers. Gandalf, for the brief time Boromir knew him, was like the grandfather of the group, gruff, stern, but always wanting the younger generation to succeed. And Gimli was the noisy oddball who filled the entire room, whose bark was always worse than his bite, who smiled often and laughed loudly.

Boromir didn't quite know where he fit in, he just knew that from the very beginning, what he'd really wanted when he set out on the quest was a place in the strange family.

**#22: Cold**

Boromir was from a warm city. Gondor was South – not like the Southern land beyond Mordor, but it didn't get cold, which was probably why he wasn't reacting well to the extreme temperatures of the Misty Mountains.

But he was what his brother called a terminally nice guy, and that wasn't going to change, even in the coldest environment he'd ever been in.

"Here." Boromir tossed his blanket over to the hobbits, shivering a few paces away from the fire, trying to pretend that they, too, were not from a warm area. "The little one is starting to turn blue." He was cold now, but at least he knew the Halflings would survive the night.

**#23: Role**

Boromir was a fighter, a soldier, Faramir was the diplomat. His little brother wasn't as hot-tempered or as stubborn as he was, and was better with languages. Actually, Boromir had asked his father specifically to give Faramir the job, because he couldn't stand the thought of his baby brother on the front lines of a war.

But what that amounted to was the fact that Boromir had never been to Rivendell, so he couldn't quite stop gaping when he saw it for the first time. "You'll get used to it, laddie. These elves just like showing off." Gimli murmured as he walked by. Boromir could only smirk, shoulder his pack, and follow.

**#24: Defense**

"Faramir," Boromir said seriously after escorting Faramir to the healer's for the third time that week, courtesy of the little brats that would pick on his younger brother. "How would you like to spar with me? It will be fun!" He kept his voice upbeat, optimistic, and Faramir jumped at the chance to spend time with his big brother, who forever seemed to be going places without him. He could never know that the fun play sessions were actually self-defense lessons, or that those lessons would one day save his life.

**#25: Inheritance **

It was hard for Boromir to be around Aragorn, because in his heart of hearts he knew that Aragorn was everyone people said he was, that he was the heir to the throne of Gondor, the throne of his city, and though he knew that his father was bitter, corrupt, he didn't know how he felt about having his inheritance stolen from him by a Ranger of the North.

But for some reason, he wanted to please the older man, the only other real _man_ on this journey, because there was something in Aragorn's eyes when you impressed him, a gleam of light, and the first time he saw it, Boromir knew that he wanted to continue to impress Aragorn for the rest of his life, even if it meant de-throning his own father.

**#26: Honor**

It took Boromir years to figure out that he was fighting to erase the name of his father from the memories of his people, that he tried to be good in order to make up for his father's evil. He fought for honor his entire life, but it seemed that in the end the most honorable thing he did was get shot while letting those two little hobbits get captured.

He died with honor, and perhaps, just perhaps, that was enough.

**#27: Girls**

Was Boromir the only one who found it odd that no one in the Fellowship was married? Not only were Aragorn and Legolas probably the most eligible bachelors this side of the Misty Mountains, but they were heirs (albeit longshots) to two separate thrones. And Gimli, who had spent most of his life around his own race and had never tied the knot. The hobbits he forgave, especially when he learned that the youngest, Pip (who was by far his favorite, though he knew he shouldn't be choosing) was only the human equivalent of twelve.

Boromir himself wasn't married, but that was because he was a soldier, because he was liable to die at any time, not because there wasn't a girl in the white city that he'd left behind, a girl who cried into her pillow the night he left, a girl who he'd loved since childhood, who he would have married if he'd come out of that Quest alive.

**#28: Prayer**

"Who are you talking to?" Frodo asked quietly, watching as Boromir went through his daily rituals of prayer.

Boromir thought of the war, of his brother, now undoubtedly fighting in it, of being so far away from home. "No one." He said, and for one horrible moment he thought that might be the truth.

**#29: Present**

Boromir had been fighting, the seemingly never-ending battle over Osgiliath, but he managed to get back the day before his brother's birthday. "I know our father doesn't choose to acknowledge your birthday." Boromir watched the newly fifteen-year-old's face fall and continued fast, "But I do care. One day, you will be a great diplomat, but you will still be a man, and every man needs to be able to defend their self." Boromir drew out the sword he'd commissioned two months ago and handed it to his brother. "I never wanted you to fight, but from now on I will teach you. No little brother of mine will die on his enemy's sword."

And Faramir never did.

**#30: Sacrifice**

"Thank you." The voice in his ear was sincere and Boromir managed to twist his features into something that resembled a smile, even as his scarlet blood dripped onto the snow, past Legolas' nimble, capable white fingers, past the multitude of bandages, "Oh, Boromir, thank you."

"I would do it again." Boromir vowed, even as his teeth began to stain with blood, as his he began to gag at the coppery taste. He managed to tilt his head just the right way so that Aragorn (who would take his father's throne, he was sure of it now, Aragorn, who he'd just saved) leaned close. "Take care of my country, my brother."

That night, Boromir became the first official casualty of the war of the Ring.

**#31: Teacher**

"Come on," Boromir was on his knees, on the hobbit level, "Don't worry, I'm a big bad warrior, you guys will never be able to – oof!"

He'd been taken off guard as all four – even the more withdrawn Frodo – came at him at once, the sticks they were using as training swords brandished. Boromir rolled with the impact, then twisted so that his body lay over the four tiny beings, using his arms to support most of his weight so he was only pinning the hobbits, not crushing them. And all were laughing.

**#32: Question **

"Father, where is Faramir?" Boromir had returned from the latest skirmish on the outer realm of Gondor, near Mordor. Usually his brother greeted him at the front gate, asking after his wounds, his soldiers, his battles.

Denethor barely looked up from his breakfast plate. "Your brother has been sent to protect this city, as you have done. To the Western border."

"Isengard?" Boromir gaped, then turned away before he could speak to his father in a way that would surely displease the Steward. Faramir had turned eighteen a fortnight before, had never been in battle.

Boromir retired to his room that night, certain he'd never see his brother again.

**#33: Song**

The ditty was an old one, a bawdy song Boromir knew from his youth, but the tune was simple and the refrain easy and verses could be invented when needed. It was exactly the kind of thing the Fellowship needed in the long, cold days of walking.

**#34: One White Tree**

It was a lay known only by the oldest men in the city, one that Boromir had memorized when he was young. He would climb into the branches of the white tree and sit there, trying to imagine the branches in full bloom. _Tall ships and tall kings_, he would recite, _three times three. What brought them over the foundered land over the flowing sea?_

And, always, at least in Boromir's memory, at that moment Faramir would find him, would climb in the branches beside him. _Seven stars and seven stones_, the little boy would answer. _And one white tree_.

When he died on the banks of the Anduin, the last sight he saw wasn't Aragorn or his own blood, but the shining, beautiful white tree. And it was in bloom.

And that's how Boromir knew it was okay to die.

**#35: ****Stars**

"That one over there is Gaharas, a brave knight who was punished by Clorion, the King of the Gods, because Gaharas was in love with his oldest daughter Presophe. To make sure he stayed away from Presophe, Clorion put him up in the sky with a mission to hunt down the _Garan_, the River Horse." Boromir allowed himself a smirk. "An impossible mission. The River Horse is a summer constellation."

He was suddenly aware of not only the hobbits staring at him with rapt attention, but Aragorn and Gandalf, too. Boromir rolled over, half-listening to the hobbits chat contentedly to themselves, and found himself wondering why fathers insisted on giving their sons tasks too tremendous to possibly carry out.

**#36: Embrace**

It was always his favorite memory – and despite the change in scenery, change in age, it really was just one memory. He would come back from a battle (somehow, the battles never seemed to cease) and Faramir would seek him out, snag him before the mandatory de-briefing with the higher ups.

"Are you okay, brother?" The compassion laced in Faramir's voice was always enough to make Boromir smile, despite whatever injuries he was carrying. Because at the end of the day, the only person who cared, really cared whether Boromir lived or died was his little brother.

**#37: Safe**

Boromir opened his eyes without knowing what had caused him to jerk out of his peaceful slumber. His hand was on his knife before he completely registered the tiny hobbit, snuggling into his blanket after being kicked out of the communal puppy-pile the Halflings usually slept in. He debated for a second about moving the lad, then shrugged to himself and put his head down, falling back to sleep with one arm draped over his new charge.

**#38: Treat**

There was no two ways about it: Boromir hated lembas bread. Had always hated it, ever since an older man, after a long night's ride, had offered him some with a smile. To him, it had no taste.

It was the hobbits, the little hobbits who had somehow become so dear to him in those months they spent trekking across the mountains, who knew this, who somehow saw his distaste at the flavor of the bread. It was the hobbits who would put berries, fish, meat in his pack, the hobbits would giggle when he drew them out, sharing them, eating everything but that damned lembas bread.

**#39: Leader**

He rose in ranks quickly, becoming lieutenant and then commander of his own battalion of soldiers. He was a tough leader, a hard leader, but he had the respect of every one of the men under his command. Because he'd deserved it. Because he genuinely cared about the people he was fighting alongside of, and if he was tough on them to learn how to fight it was because he didn't want them dying in battle.

Boromir was a hard man, a tough man, but he was the most respected figure in Gondor. Maybe that's why it seemed to be that it was just after his death when all Hell broke loose.

**#40: Orcs**

It was, strangely, the one thing they could all relate on. Legolas made a remark, one day, in an uncharacteristically bitter tone, that he would have no home to return to, that orcs were overrunning Mirkwood and the strength of all his brothers wasn't enough to keep it at bay. Gimli seconded this, saying that the mines of his cave-dwelling people were forever under siege by the ruthless race.

Boromir kept his face carefully impassive, though Aragorn caught him running a hand over an old white scar, stretched tight over the skin of his forearm as if he'd sustained the wound as a child.

**#41: Game**

They indulged in games, because even those who should know better - that is to say, everyone who wasn't a hobbit, those who had grown up in the way of the warrior - got bored with the endless monotony of marching.

The favorite game was "Where's Pippin?" (though it occasionally became 'Where's Merry?' when the other Halfling chose to play) and involved the youngest member of the Fellowship darting forward or running off the path, soft feet padding and leaving no trace, until the other members of the Felowship would begin to talk among themselves.

"Aragorn, my brother, have you seen young Pippin to-day?"

"Not since noon meal. Gimli, have you caught sight of little Pip?"

"Not hide nor hair. Legolas?"

"No sign. Where could he have gone?" By this time, even Frodo and Sam, usually carefully stoic, were grinning broadly, and even Gandalf would chuckle to himself.

Of course, in the end, Pippin always gave away his position, because he just couldn't help the peals of laughter he let out when Boromir pounced on him, tousling his hair and playing as he would with any child in his kingdom.

**#42: Truth**

Boromir thought that many things were wrong in his world, but sitting next to his brother, feeling the weight of his arm or head on his shoulder…well, perhaps that was the only real truth there was.

**#43: Accident**

He drew his sword back, wiped the sweat and blood from out of his eyes, and looked, really looked, at the pile of bodies around him. They were orcs, Uruk'hai, assorted goblins…and a soldier from his own battalion, the same age as he, lying dead with wounds obviously inflicted by Boromir's own sword.

**#44: Conversation**

"Are you going to war, brother?"

"I have to."

"You are awfully young."

"I have a duty to my country. Besides, I'm nearly nineteen."

Faramir paused, gazed out the window, curled his fists in an expression of teen angst. "You're awfully young." He leaned against Boromir, something he hadn't done since he'd entered puberty. "Don't die, Bo."

"I can't, little brother. Who would be around to look after you?"

**#45: Trip**

As it turned out, hobbits didn't know how to swim, and they didn't like water. Oh, it was fine when they were bathing and could touch the bottom with their feet, but when Gimli suggested they just wade through a stream instead of walking two hours around it, the usually complacent Halflings began to protest.

"We'll carry you." Boromir said carefully, already sorting out the packs and redistributing them to make the weight easier to bear. "You don't weigh much of anything anyway."

Pippin immediately scrambled into Boromir's arms, throwing his arms around his neck. Boromir also picked up Merry, the second smallest, since Gimli would have a tough enough time keeping himself afloat.

Pippin let out a peal of laughter when the water hit his backside, then settled his head in the crook of Boromir's neck for the remainder of the ride. "Thank you, Bo." He said, already chattering with Merry about a place called Buckleberry, and a ferry.

So of course he wasn't looking at Boromir's face, frozen at the sudden use of his brother's childhood nickname.

**#46: Little Ones**

"They took the little ones!" Boromir cried helplessly, clasping Aragorn's hand in his, unable even to look at his chest, pierced through with arrows. It was the first thing he said because it was the most important. He would die knowing he failed to protect those he'd come to love.

**#47: Shield**

On the way out of Rivendell, it was Legolas who stood in front of him, barring his path, eyebrows creased in thought. "You shouldn't carry that. It's too heavy."

Back then, Boromir hadn't known the elf well enough to tease him, just brushed by with a scathing look. He'd been carrying a shield since he was twelve.

And when he threw it up during that avalanche, blocking most of the snow and a rock that would have split Legolas' skull in two…well, no one ever told him to leave the shield behind again.

**#48: Drink**

He drank until he forgot the fury on his father's face, present every time the Steward looked at his youngest son. He drank until he forgot the stench of battle, the fatigue that came with minutes and hours of slaughter. He drank until he forgot the cadence of Faramir's voice as he begged his older brother not to leave him behind. He drank until he forgot the last promise he made before joining the Fellowship, a promise to a young man (who would always be a young boy to his older brother ) to return home in one piece.

**#49: Loyalty**

Faramir rushed to the Houses of Healing only to find his path blocked by two hundred or more men, soldiers, Boromir's men. He wanted, needed to see his brother so much that he could have screamed at the mass of obstacles in his way, would have, too, if he didn't know that these men were there because Boromir had protected his army just as fiercely as he protected his brother.

**#50: Love**

Boromir was a leader of the army of Gondor, a great leader, a great strategist, and as a general he would lay down his life for any one of his men. It was in his oath, but more importantly, it was in his nature. And his men, because they were undyingly loyal to him, would lay down their lives to save their commander.

But it was only when he joined the Fellowship that Boromir found people who would kill for him, die for him, not out of a sense of duty or honor, but because of that inexplicable bond that occurred between people in it together for the long haul. Only with Faramir had Boromir experienced that kind of bond, and therefore he gave his relationship with the other members of the Fellowship the same name.

Because, in the end, all he had left was love.

**So the same system goes with this chapter as the other ones. Pick a couple of drabbles you really like and mention them to us in a review. Next chapter will be an expanded, one-shot version of the drabble most people liked.**


	8. Interlude IV

**_#9: Bond_**

_It took Boromir twenty minutes of searching before he found Faramir in one of the inner courtyards. The doors had been barred and the young boy was trapped in the small, grassy area, curled in a ball against a corner to escape the cold._

_Boromir shook his little brother until he blinked sleepily, yawning to reveal a pink tongue, a small double-row of baby teeth. Without question, Faramir draped his arms over Boromir's shoulders and let his older brother carry him into the house._

_"I tried to be good, Bo, but father got mad at me when I talked to the man." The drowsy voice made Boromir's heart clench painfully. "And I is hungry now." And cold, soaked through, on his way to a fever. Boromir wrapped his arms more securely around the little boy in his arms, promising himself that this would never happen again._

Boromir was happy that, for once, Faramir was not waiting for him at the door. The four-year-old's small sphere of the world consisted of the two highest levels of the citadel, and every time Boromir left them, whether for school or play, Faramir would always wait impatiently for his return.

Except for today. Boromir, returning from a long, confusing lesson about holding his sword (why he needed to hold it differently was beyond him), found that the entry way where Faramir usually waiting, chewing chestnuts contentedly while swinging his feet lazily on a stone bench, was empty. "Good," he sighed, rushing up to the baths. Father would be angry if he was late to supper, and putting up with his baby brother's questions would surely mean that he would have to shorten his bath. And, o! did his muscles ache!

"Bo?" Boromir looked up at the name, expecting to find Faramir, intruding once again on his bath, but looking instead into the face of Colins, the youngest servant in the household and Boromir's best friend. "The Steward has left his rooms. If you don't hurry, he'll be at the dining hall before you." There was apprehension and warning in Colins' voice, a sure sign that something had gone wrong in the household while Boromir was away for the day.

Boromir nodded, thankful for the tip, and threw on his clothes in a hurry. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to ignore his aching muscles and he rushed out of the room. He was halfway down the hall before Colins caught up to him.

"Shoes, Bo?" The blond servant smiled, thrusting the boots into Boromir's arms.

"Were you not here, Colins, I would forget my own head." Boromir laughed, "Do not ever let me go to war without you." Even at nine, he knew that one day he would participate in one of the wars that were fought around Gondor, would probably lead men into one of the seemingly unending battles. Colins would indeed go with him into battle, would save Boromir's life o n four separate occasions before dying under an orc spear in the Battle of Osgiliath, the last battle Boromir participated in before joining the Fellowship.

But neither knew their futures as nine year olds, standing in the hallway in the cold waning sun, and Colins laughed a little, because he knew that his Bo (he was the only one, other than Faramir, to think of Boromir as "his Bo") would, indeed, forget his head in the morning if Colins didn't remind him to screw it on tight. "Don't keep your father waiting."

Boromir tugged on his boots as he ran, skidding to a halt in front of the door to the dining hall just as he buckled the last clasp. He looked up at one of the guards in front of the door. "He in there yet?" Everyone who lived on the top level of the citadel worked together so as not to incur the wrath of the Steward more often than strictly necessary.

His father entered just as Boromir managed to sit down in way that made it look like he'd been waiting in the same spot for an hour. Denethor raised one eyebrow at him as he took a seat opposite Boromir, fifteen feet away. "How were your lessons, Boromir?" His father asked, already eating the first course that had been placed in front of him.

"Interesting. Although I realized today that I am not quite the master of swords I thought I was." _That _revelation came only after going seven rounds with a fifteen-year-old, the apprentice of the blacksmith, and being thoroughly beating every time. And his muscles ached so! "I had to leave early to escape the rain."

Denethor, as he usually did, seemed completely uninterested in Boromir's day. And his son was fine with that. The less time he spent with his father, the better. Tonight, Boromir knew that he would be regaling Faramir with the same story, adding details, real and imagined, until his baby brother's eyes widened with wonder at the adventures his older brother always seemed to have without him.

Thinking of Faramir made Boromir glance around the table, which was empty of the four-year-old's happy chatter. A prickling unease lifted the tiny hairs on the back of his neck when he realized that Faramir wasn't present, but he dismissed the gut feeling as gooseflesh from the cold.

It wasn't until near the end of the penultimate course that Boromir mustered up the courage to ask his nagging question. "Father, will Faramir be joining us for supper?"

"Your brother has disgraced me in front of a trader. He will not receive his supper until he has learned to be respectful to his betters."

Boromir had to bite his tongue to keep from retorting that his shy, polite little brother would never have dishonored their father by being rude to his guests. He couldn't even say that it was wrong for a four-year-old boy to be denied supper, because his father glared at him so coolly that Boromir bowed his head over his plate, cheeks hot with indignation.

He asked to be excused within five minutes of his father's callous announcement and received the usual reply, the monosyllabic "go." Boromir fled the room as quickly as he could without appearing to be fleeing and caught Colins' sleeve as soon as he left the hall. "Where is Faramir?"

Colins, Faramir's preferred playmate whenever Boromir was unavailable, furrowed his small brow in sudden worry. "I haven't seen him since this morning. The Steward requested him to sing in front of one of his guests."

That was unsurprising in itself, for Faramir, with his high, unchanged soprano, was easily one of the best singers in Gondor, and Denethor often called on him to sing. It was the only in singing that their father rated Faramir as Boromir's better. "You did not see him after?"

"No." The worry that Boromir felt flitted obviously across Colins' face. "Usually he stays in the kitchens in the afternoon, but I went down there earlier to get warm and he wasn't anywhere."

The slow feeling of panic that had been boiling in the pit of Boromir's stomach expanded suddenly, choking of his speech with worry. Finally able to talk past the sizable lump, he said, "Search the kitchens again, and all the rooms on the upper floor. Check his usual hiding places."

Colins barely heard the words before he was off, and a second later Boromir was peeling off in the opposite direction. Checking the entire main floor, especially accounting for all the places a rather small four-year-old could possibly hide, would be no easy task. He ruled out the courtyards and the Great Hall automatically – they were too cold for Faramir to hide in – but a careful check of the remaining rooms yielded only more worry, now intense, in the pit of his stomach.

In desperation, he started the courtyards, praying that his little brother had not decided to hide under a bench and had frozen in the cold wind and weather. Boromir knew that winter sicknesses could kill. He'd seen it happen to many young friends over his short lifetime.

One courtyard was barred from the inside, and Boromir had to find Colins in order to lift the heavy pieces of timber. The desolate, grassy area was, at first glance, deserted. Boromir almost backed up, almost lifted the heavy beams to re-bar the entrance, when suddenly Colins broke from his side, crossing the small area in a few long strides.

Faramir was curled in a ball, his lips blue, his eyes closed. His clothes and skin were soaked with cold rain, but when Boromir went to lift him into his arms he flinched back at the force of the fever emanating from Faramir's body. Trying again, he knelt and shook the boy, feeling suddenly sick to his stomach at the thought of his brother out in the cold all afternoon.

"Faramir? Little brother, it is time to wake up." The feeling of relief that washed over him as piercing blue eyes opened to meet his own was…indescribable.

"Bo?" Even as Faramir talked, Boromir was scooping him into his arms. As soon as they exited the courtyard, Colins draped a heavy blanket around the younger son of Denethor. Faramir leaned his head into the crook of Boromir's neck, that little spot, Faramir claimed, had been made just for him.

"I is hungry, Bo." Faramir yawned, pink tongue extending beyond blue lips. Boromir turned over his shoulder to tell Colins to run ahead to the baths, to make sure there was one that was warm (not hot. Long ago his instructors had impressed on him the importance of warming up a freezing person slowly). But Colins was already gone, sprinting ahead, leaving the brothers to themselves.

Boromir knew he had a temper. Knew, because everyone he'd ever met had told him to attempt to control it. And he did try that night, as he looked at his brother, who was well on his way to a flu or worse. "Faramir…" he started, though he was loathe to disturb the boy who seemed to have fallen asleep against his chest. "Faramir, why were you in the courtyard?"

If his little brother had said that their father made him stand in the courtyard all afternoon, Boromir would have…he didn't know what he would have done. Denethor was his world, and though even at nine he knew the man was bitter, twisted, and sometimes even cruel, the Steward was the only person standing between Boromir and the harsh world. He tried to make it different for Faramir, tried to become a mentor, a father, in addition to a brother, yet Faramir still constantly sought their father's praise. And never received it.

But Faramir didn't accuse his father, not of this act (though there would be worse in their lifetimes. Their father had two sons, and he only needed one as his successor. The other, in his mind, was weak. Expendable.) Instead, the four-year-old snuggled further into Boromir's warm chest. "I was hidin'." The young boy confessed. "Fwom you."

"Why?" Boromir asked, genuinely surprised at the answer. He didn't need the constant reminders from the servants, teachers, staff that were constantly in and out of the citadel to know that Faramir hero-worshipped him.

"Fadder is mad at me." Faramir murmured, "Said I don't get no supper. I is hungry, Bo." Faramir said again, his voice low and sleepy.

"I know, kiddo. What happened with father?"

Faramir sighed, a strangely old sound. "He said I…'sippointed him." _Disappointed him_. A, there was a phrase that Denethor liked to whip out. No matter how many times Boromir told his brother that he was smart, strong, interesting, worthwhile, Denethor could always breath Faramir's spirit with those few words. "Said I can't do anything right."

"Ah. And you thought I'd be the same as father?" Even though Boromir had never said a harsh word against his little brother. Faramir was the world to him, a bright light in his otherwise strict upbringing. The small nod against his shoulder hurt him deeper than any of the bruises on his body.

In that short walk to the bath, Boromir tried to impress upon his brother that he would never be disappointed in him, that he would never overlook him, that he would never, ever, be like their father.

It wasn't until years later, when Faramir celebrated his eighteenth birthday by riding into battle on their father's orders, that Boromir realized that the love of a brother may not be enough.

**Review?**


	9. Legolas and Gimli

**Legolas and Gimli**

_**Gimli: **Never thought I'd die fighting side by side with an elf.  
**Legolas: **How about side by side with a friend?  
**Gimli: **Aye. I can do that._

**#1: Odd Couple**

"Pointy-eared Princeling!" Gimli would bluster and shout.

"Money-grubbing dwarf!" Legolas never shouted, but his words radiated with contempt, power.

How, then, did the two find themselves in each other's company years later? How, then, did they become each other's best friends?

**#2: Rivendell**

Legolas prided himself on speaking Falathrin, Sindarin (the standard language of elves), Quenyan (used in the upper echelons of elvish society) and the guttural language of man. When Gimli breezed in to Rivendell, stumbling along in man-speak and not knowing much else, Legolas made it his mission to crack the difficult dwarvish tongue.

He never did.

**#3: Taunts**

They were readying their packs. Gimli's was heaviest of the Fellowship, and draped it all over his stout back. Legolas' was, unsurprisingly, the lightest, and he laid it carefully over Bill the Pony, touching the beasts' muzzle. "It looks like we're together for the long haul, Princeling." It was as close to an olive branch as Gimli would get.

"It appears so." Legolas' voice lilted with mirth and he turned his face towards the dwarf, taller than the hobbits but still coming only to just below Legolas' shoulder. "Make sure to keep up, dwarf."

"We'll see who has to keep up with whom." Gimli muttered darkly, already promising himself that he would never, ever fall behind with impudent elf.

**#4: Misinformation**

It was their first night, barely out of sight of Rivendell, when little Pippin spoke up from the other side of the campfire. "What do dwarves eat?" he asked, wide eyes beneath the mop of curls revealing nothing but innocence. "Rocks?"

Gimli turned scarlet and couldn't get words out for several minutes. It didn't help that, for the first time in a long, long while, Legolas was bent double, wiping tears of laughter from his face.

**#5: Tenderness**

Legolas watched from a distance. He didn't dare spar with the tiny hobbits, even in jest, not trusting himself to restrain his elvish strength against opponents no more dangerous or learned than children.

He wasn't surprised to see Estel and Boromir teaching the two youngest to use their small swords properly, but he was struck by the gentle way Gimli turned Sam's hand, adjusting it on the hilt of the blade. "There you go." The dwarf said kindly. "Now hit me…don't worry, it won't hurt. I'm armored and…oof!" Gimli pretended to fall, grabbing his chest and letting his tongue fall out in a parody of death, making all the hobbits, nervous and skittish until then, laugh happily.

Legolas turned away, surprised and a little – was this right? - jealous of Gimli's easy tenderness.

**#6: Cold**

"I hate the cold." Gimli grumbled into his beard, holding his frozen hands over the meager fire that Sam had, impossibly, been able to start on the wet, wet ground.

It didn't help that when he woke up next, Legolas was lying on his stomach in a snow drift, showing Frodo and Merry how to make snowmen faster than Pippin could destroy them to make snow balls. Gimli was bundled in just about every article of clothing he owned, and Legolas was wearing next to nothing. "Damn elves…always showing off…"

**#7: Appreciation**

"_Le hannon_. Thank you" Legolas whispered as Gimli dropped next to him and Aragorn. On the other side of the room, Gandalf, Boromir, and the hobbits were exclaiming over the Ring Bearer, who was supposed to be dead.

Gimli shook his head, fingers deftly plucking the fragments of metal from Aragorn's wound. He'd barely been able to deflect the troll's terrible blow, and had gotten a good gash because of it, but he wouldn't speak of that. Not now. Looking between Legolas and Aragorn – knowing their close relationship – he got up to go to Frodo. As he left, he placed one hand on Legolas' shoulder. "He would have done the same for me."

**#8: Mithrandir**

In his life Gimli had never seen an elf cry. At that instant, he knew why his father would say that elves were the most powerful, wicked race on Middle Earth. When he saw the young prince weeping over Gandalf's death, his footing still sure, his head raised to the heavens, it didn't take much imagination to know that, if enough elves were together, and crying so terribly, so beautifully, he, Gimli, would do everything in his power to make sure they stopped.

**#10: Forest**

Legolas had always loved the land of Lorien, even if he'd only been there a dozen or so times in his life. Time was different there – it was different for all elves. An elf could leave for a visit and come back a decade later, or go on holiday and return after a century. Time was irrelevant for immortals.

So he was somewhat used to the spell-binding quality of life in Lothlorian, was used to the still ponds and quiet evenings and eerie trees. He expected the others to be ill at ease in the somewhat foreboding place. He especially didn't expect a _dwarf_ to be so…happy.

"I never thought I would feel at home anywhere but under the Earth." Gimli murmured as they paddled away. The smaller warrior still clutched the three golden hairs to his chest, a talisman, unknowingly defying every assumption Legolas had made about dwarves. "I guess I was wrong."

**#11: Battle**

He was an excellent fighter, had been trained by his father since he was a very small dwarf, but six orcs against one of him wasn't a fight, it was a massacre.

Maybe that was the point where war became a game between them. It was hard to look at such slaughter – even of orcs, who were always perceived at the bottom of the figurative totem pole – without feeling guilt, remorse. But Gimli knew that, after being cornered, after he was ready to accept his death, ready to go down swinging, an arrow came out of nowhere, then another, then another, all hitting their marks.

**#12: Pointless**

One of the worst moments in Legolas' long, long life – standing over the orc carcasses, finding the miniature daggers, knowing those two hobbits…those young, bright, wonderful little hobbits, were both dead.

And Gimli's hand was suddenly on his elbow, and his eyes were bright with pain and fatigue, and Legolas knew that Merry and Pippins' deaths could not be in vain.

**#13: Fall**

He couldn't look at the elf the rest of the ride to Helms' Deep. He climbed on the horse, because his ribs were killing him, and didn't even try to persuade Legolas to come up beside him, even though he hated the stupid beasts, even though he didn't entirely trust them.

He'd heard Legolas and Aragorn (_Aragorn! _Gone like Boromir, like Frodo and Sam, like Gandalf had been!) talk in the night, together, old friends with nicknames and jokes and a long back story. He'd been bred to hate elves and all they stood for, hate them for taking the mountains, for interfering with the ancient dwarf customs.

But seeing the ancient being, still so much just a boy, made Gimli look away and wish he hadn't, wish he had nerve enough, strength enough, heart enough, to make Legolas feel better.

**#14: Search**

This was perhaps the most morbid search Legolas had ever been on.

He scoured through the piles of dead, looking for one particular dead body. He couldn't rationalize, even to himself, his need to find the dwarf alive, except that they'd been together for so long, gone through so much, and he didn't want Gimli to die, not even a little bit, because the dwarf was intelligent and funny, taking Legolas' and Aragorn's convoluted ideas and summarizing them in a few simple words.

So when he found Gimli groaning on top of a pile of at least a dozen Uruk'hai, bruised and bloodied but very much alive, something happy fluttered in his chest, quickly ignored and squashed before he could even begin to identify it as friendship.

**#15: Numbers**

While Legolas bandaged Gimli's forehead, he couldn't help but smile at the dwarf's high spirits. "Why are you so pleased? You have a mighty wound, my friend." The last part slipped, slipped, because he could not be friends with a dwarf of all things, the nasty, dirty little men his father used to scoff at.

Luckily, Gimli didn't notice this, or didn't comment. "How many did you slay, elf? And do not say you keep no count, for we both know that isn't true."

Legolas tied off the bandage. "Your head will hurt." He paused, then allowed a small smile. "Forty-two."

It had been a long night, and Gimli had narrowly escaped death, so when his eyes crossed, became unfocused, Legolas forgave him. "Ah. I have killed," a mighty yawn, "forty-three." Sleep came easily then, and Legolas stood, promised, quietly, to return later, told a young boy to watch over Gimli….

…his friend,

**#16: Amazement**

Gimli looked from his sword, wavering in his unsteady hand, up at the stunned faces of Legolas and Aragorn. Before he knew it he was on the ground, blood pouring from a deep wound in his side.

Later he woke to the staring bright eyes of that damned elf. "What do you want?" He asked, trying for gruff, ending up sounding like he felt…in pain. The elf said nothing, just nodded his head and re-wrapped Gimli's wound, his gentle fingers and wide eyes conveying his thanks to the dwarf who'd just saved all of their lives.

**#17: Deal**

Somewhere along the way, Legolas promised to show Gimli all the beautiful forests of Middle Earth, including a special re-visit to Lothlorien. And Gimli promised caves less dangerous than Moria.

**#18: Absolution**

They'd known, in their minds, that Merry and Pippin were alive. But it wasn't until they finally saw the tiny hobbits, bursting with the pride of their own not-so-small battle won, that Legolas finally allowed himself to sink into the relief of seeing not one but three friends back from certain death.

"Hobbits." Gimli snorted, shaking his head, but he had a twitch of a smile on his face, and Legolas nodded so that only the dwarf could see him.

**#19: Flotsam and Jetsam**

Half-way through the little hobbits' story, Legolas tore his gaze away from the remarkably alive Merry and Pippin and glanced at Gimli, shivering despite the warmth of the evening, his white bandage standing out stark in the moonlight. Shrugging off his over-cloak, Legolas tossed it at the dwarf before turning back to listen with rapt attention to the tale.

Later that night, when the cloak was left on his pack, Aragorn threw back his head and laughed, saying there may be hope for dwarves and elves after all.

**#20: Praise**

The horse's gait was wildly uneven, and even though Gimli had been on the horse's back for weeks now, he still wasn't quite used to the strange rocking motion. Still, he managed to grab at Legolas' arm just in front of him, making the elf turn around, one eye brow raised delicately.

"Nice shot, laddie." Gimli murmured, thinking of Saruman, and a long fall into the waters of Isengard. And Legolas smiled.

**#21: Softer Side**

"Don't worry," Gimli murmured, watching Merry watch Pippin as the younger hobbit was spirited away from him. "The old wizard won't let anything happen to the little one."

And Legolas, watching from the depths of the Rohirim hold, envied, just a little, how easy it was for the dwarf to reach out to someone, to say just the right words.

**#22: Skirmish**

It wasn't even worth writing home about, but the tiny battle between the attacking wargs and the men and assorted elves, exposed in a valley, was short, but blood-ridden. "Legolas!" The shout came just an instant too late and Legolas whirled, blades raised, just in time to see a warg leaping for his throat…

…until it was knocked down by a blow from the back side of one of Gimli's axes. The two stared at each other for half a second, Legolas in stunned wonder at being alive, Gimli, smirking, happy to have pulled one over on an elf. "That's fifteen." Gimli said easily, already running back into the fray, "I'm winning."

**#23: Camp**

Somewhere along the way, Legolas and Gimli became banded in the never-ending quest to keep Aragorn alive. Legolas because of his love for his Estel, his childhood friend. Gimli because dwarves, if nothing else, loved their history, and he knew that Aragorn had the blood of a king, was born to be king.

So when he was sneaking out of camp, trying to avoid those who loved him best, it was only natural that a dwarf and an elf would band together to prevent a man from doing something so stupid.

**#24: Horses**

"You're not going to fall off, you know."

But Gimli would have none of it, and only clutched Legolas tighter, recounting all the times he _had_ fallen off, neglecting to mention that, every time, the elf had been there to help him back up.

**#25: Death**

Legolas was staring into the Path of the Dead, watching as Aragorn moved restlessly at its entrance. "Boromir is dead."

Gimli looked at him strangely, then nodded, "Aye, he is."

"Frodo and Sam could be as well." It wasn't a morbid thought, the way Legolas expressed it. Merely an observation. "Tomorrow, you may be dead, or I." He glanced again at the path. "I wonder…will we linger when we go? Or will we find the strength to move on?"

And Gimli…didn't have an answer for that.

**#26: Moment**

They were on the ships, staring out at the citadel, bright and burning with fire, with chaos, with fear. "It looks like the end of the world." Legolas whispered, and Gimli stared up at him, face unreadable for a minute. Aragorn was at the bow, poised, ready, so he didn't hear Legolas' next words, "We're going to die."

"Aye." Gimli confirmed, nodding sagely, letting the melancholy of the moment wash over him before smiling roguishly. "First to fifty wins." If they lived that long. But Legolas smiled and laughed the tinkling laugh of elves that made Gimli almost believe they weren't the land-stealing demons his father had taught him about.

**#27: Outside**

The Rohirim man was exhausted after six hours of battle, swinging his sword almost mindlessly, leaving open defenses that would have been carefully minded hours earlier. But he was exhausted, and injured, and wanted it to end.

When he was aware of the world next, a dwarf was yelling on the back of a horse, screaming at the elf in front of him to go faster, because he'd get more orc heads that way. At the elf laughed in the midst of blood and sweat and death, laughed and spurred the horse faster, his own sword flailing to take out orcs, Uruk'hai, men of the South….

The man looked back at his own fight, and when he was aware of the world next the pair were gone. Later, he would think he'd dreamed of them in his time of need, dreamed of the unlikely pair, full of life while surrounded by death, encouraging him to fight just a while longer.

**#28: Separated**

Gimli glanced up from his slaughter for just enough time to realize that Legolas was no longer next to him that, in fact, the battle had drifted them fifty yards away from each other, that the elf was being attacked on all sides and, though his blade was whirling faster than Gimli's eyes could follow, the enemies were pushing against him. Once in a while, the sword would falter, and Legolas would be nicked by an orc-blade, and blood would leak out onto the already blood-swollen ground.

With a cry of rage, or exhilaration, of adrenaline in the heat of battle, Gimli launched himself into the fray, laughing when he and the elf ended up back-to-back, laughing as the enemies died in droves around them…

…he had forty-nine now, and the number was still growing.

**#29: Win?**

Legolas slid off the Oiliphant, expecting a glaring dwarf and harsh words and finding…nothing. "Sixty-two." He said to no one in particular, though a nearby Gondorian stared at him with blank eyes. Without thinking, he stabbed a knife over his shoulder and slashed open an orc's face.

He didn't see Gimli until two hours later, when he doubled over in pain and prayer and saw his face, still and white under several orcs. Though Gimli was eventually cleaned up, grumpily revealing his score as seventy-nine, fifteen behind Legolas….though the elf did win, his heart never really restarted again.

**#30: Plan**

"Do you know what we're doing?"

"No, Princeling, but that's the fun part, ain't it?" A clap on the back, a gruff, laughing voice, "Live a little."

**#31: Death**

It took over a day to ride to the Black Gates, and Aragorn just couldn't justify keeping the thousands of battle-weary men on horses that long. "Make camp – five hours." Legolas immediately jumped nimbly from his horse, pulling an exhausted and pale-looking Gimli after him. "Are you alright?" He knew that Gimli was hurt worse that he'd let Aragorn know and hoped that this new…friend…would tell him how he was injured so that Legolas could help, maybe, protect him as long as he could.

Gimli sighed heavily, glanced up at the carpet of stars, "Pray tell, master elf: what afterlife do you believe in?"

"It is bad luck to talk about Death before battle." Legolas warned, but thought about the question anyway. "Elves believe in rewards after death…if you were good enough, brave enough in life, you reach the White Shores."

"That sounds comforting, laddie." Gimli helped Legolas strip the horse of its baggage. "I as a dwarf do not believe a word of it. The afterlife consists of a great hall…there is no word for it in this language…" He uttered a guttural noise. "But it is reserved only for those most deserving of it – only the lucky few."

Legolas stared at the dwarf for a second before making a promise he would be bound to for the rest of his life. "If we make it through this battle, Gimli, I will do everything in my power to make sure you get to the White Shores."

**#32: Side By Side**

That was the moment they truly became friends for life, thirty-one moments after they'd met, thirty-one moments after Gimli had decided Legolas was a stuck up elf, after Legolas had guessed that Gimli was another mindless dwarf.

"Who'd have thought I'd be dying side-by-side with an elf?" Gimli's voice was sarcastic, terse just before battle, and Legolas looked at him and smiled.

"How about side-by-side with a friend?" And it only took thirty-one life changing moments to unite the two biggest rivals on Middle Earth.

**#33: Blood**

Legolas doesn't know he's covered in blood until Aragorn rushes over to him, alarmed. He looks down, knowing he must appear to his friend to be on the brink of death. The word swims before his eyes when he sees the cold, still face of Gimli, killed by orc-blades and man-spears. It is his blood that Legolas will remember for the rest of his life.

**#34: Words**

"Gimli…are you alive?"

"I think so. It's too dark for this to be death. And I don't think Heaven would let in any elves."

"Did we win?"

"At this point, my Princeling, I don't care. Did you know my final score, all together, was over three hundred?"

"We survived many battles. We are lucky to be alive."

"Speak for yourself. If I were lucky I would have this gaping hole in my…."

**#35: Truth**

They walk together down the hallway, Legolas arguing fate with Gimli. _It has to exist_, he says, _just think about it_. They'd survived hypothermia, Moria, the Anduin, orcs and Uruk'hai a thousand times over. They'd survived Fangorn and Helm's Deep and the Paths of the Dead. They'd survived Pellanor Fields and the Black Gate. They'd survived dozens of lesser battles in between. "Fate." Legolas said seriously. "Luck. Divine intervention."

"Skill." Gimli said, and walked away, leaving Legolas staring after him, shaking his head.

**#36: Coronation**

"Now what?" Gimli asked, staring at Legolas, who was staring at his _Estel_, who was staring at Arwen as he had a crown placed on his head.

_Thy heart shall then rest in the forest no more_. "I always wanted to travel." Legolas said lightly, looking down at the dwarf with a wicked gleam in his eye.

**#37: Danger**

It had been three months since the end of the war of the Ring, and still they were attracting beasts. Gimli sliced the goblin in half and Legolas whirled to catch another in the chest. "Why is it always us?" Gimli yowled, slicing and hacking. Legolas smiled, because he knew, as he knew during every battle, that Gimli would not have it any other way.

**#38: Friends**

During the journey, the short, stout, hardy dwarf had somehow replaced Estel(now in his seventies, not his teens, now with an important lineage, now with more pressing matters to deal with than his lonely _mellon_) in Legolas' heart, worming in there and holding fast, which might have been why they ended up together for the rest of their days.

**#39: Marriage**

Legolas was a prince, but the seventh in line for the throne. Marriage was for his brothers, who would rule their woodland realm and need their own heirs. Anyway, the only female elf he'd ever been interested in was the love of his best friend's life.

"I would have liked to marry." Gimli said much later as they drifted from cave to sea to forest, always flitting, never settling, encountering adventures and ideas and peoples and cultures, the only constants being each other. "I could have ruled in my father's stead, had a dozen children." Gimli looked at Legolas for a moment, then shook his head. "How in the world did I get stuck with you?"

**#40: Shire**

Legolas had visited the place often in his youth, but Gimli had never been North or Rivendell and badgered the aging elf constantly until they visited the Shire-folk. When the hobbits saw their friends (and was it just him, or were the hobbits getting shorter?) they gave the two a whirlwind tour of one of the most beautiful places Gimli had ever seen. "It's so simple." Gimli murmured, looking around at the tiny people. "So quiet." It was perfect.

**#41: Luna**

"_Ithil_." Legolas said, pointing.

Gimli shook his head, "_Kehled_." And though he repeated the word four more times, the elf could not bend his tongue around the hard, foreign consonants. Gimli smiled and recited "The Fall of Gil-Galad" in Falatharin. Legolas couldn't even stumble along in modern dwarvish.

"Moon." Legolas said quietly, and they both reverted back to the man-tongue so that Legolas wouldn't have to admit he'd failed at something as simple as learning a language.

**#42: Horses**

"You have to learn to ride your own horse." Legolas said. He liked the familiar feel of the dwarf behind him, but a few years into their treks he noticed a fair few bumps and bruises – including the latest broken rib – that had resulted from Gimli falling off after Legolas spurred the horse on just a little faster.

He expected protest. He expected lectures about dwarf culture versus elf culture. He expected names and groans and agony, not, "Fine, Princeling. I was getting tired of never seeing anything first, anyway."

**#43: Secrets**

"I once fell in love with a human woman who walked through our mines when I was young." Gimli was perched on top of a horse and staring off at a point just over the horizon.

Legolas cleared his throat, trying to think of something, anything to say. "I once shot my best friend. Estel. Aragorn. We were hunting…I thought I was shooting the beast but I shot him instead."

Gimli looked over at him, then nodded, smiling a little. "I think you win, laddie."

**#44: Voyages**

They would spend weeks in the saddle, months at their various destinations. They roamed as they pleased, visited Rivendell and Lothlorian, the Misty Mountains and Moria. They traveled often to Gondor, to Rohan, to Isengard. They'd spend long summers in the Shire with Sam and his many children, or Merry and his many children, or Pippin and his many children. They were welcome most everywhere, honored guests because of a combination of Legolas being a prince and Gimli being dwarf nobility and them both helping to change the course of Middle Earth.

They were nomadic, restless. The one constant in their lives were each other. They'd never been happier.

**#45: Family**

"_Goheno nin_. Forgive me, master dwarf." Gimli turned to Legolas and the elf winced to see a bruise already forming around his friend's eye. "_Ada_ is very old-fashioned. His prejudice runs deep." Legolas spurred his horse forward and tentatively put a hand on Gimli's arm. "You know that none of that was about you? He is angry at himself for sending me away, for having joined the Fellowship…"

"Aye, Princeling, I know." The sad smile made the bruise even more prominent, and Legolas burned with anger and frustration that his own family could do this to Gimli.

He never went home again.

**#46: Legacy**

"What do leave behind when we die?" Legolas' voice was the only sound next to the babbling brook and the steady hum of life. "We have not lands nor children nor wives to mourn our deaths."

"Aye." Gimli agreed, "But we have those little hobbits, yeah? And it seems to me like hobbits spend a mighty amount of their time telling stories, and I know for a fact we're in them, Princeling, for I heard little Pip relate one to his son, and he spoke very highly of your bow." Gimli was quiet for another moment before saying, quite seriously, "And I suppose the thousand devils we killed between us will always remember our names when we go."

**#47: Pass**

Elves and dwarves live long, longer than men, longer, it seemed than hobbits. They got news of Pippin's death a month after it happened, traveling through the untamed wild of Fangorn with Quickbean as their guide. On their ride to Gondor, where Pippin had lived out their days, news came of Merry's death, just a week later than his best friend's.

Merry and Pippin, the real heart of the Fellowship, had passed on to the Havens at over one hundred years old. Gandalf had gone with Frodo, and Sam had followed after. Boromir was of course already gone. The only ones left were Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli.

"I think it's time to build a boat." Was all Aragorn said. And so they did.

**#48: Last**

It was a year of lasts. Their last quest: to find materials necessary to build a boat to survive a journey to the Grey Havens. Their last quiet night under the stars, just Legolas and Gimli and the soft sighs of their horses. Their last long discussion with Aragorn, reminiscing about battles and friends and times long gone. Their last farewell to a land they had fought for, bled for, lived for.

And when at last it came time for the two friends to board their boat, they were ready because they knew, this way, they'd never have to say those last goodbyes to each other.

**#49: Life**

Life was precious. Legolas knew this on the battle field, when thousands were slaughtered around him. He knew this on the hunt, when he mourned every life lost thoroughly, deeply. He had felt the sting of lost life, lost companionship, every time one of his beloved friends died.

On that long, hard journey to the Grey Havens, Legolas came to know that Gimli's life was precious. He was getting on in his years, and every day there was a chance that he would not make it to see the end of their journey. "Either way," the dwarf would assure him, struggling for breath, for words, "we've had a hell of a life."

Truer words had never been spoken.

**#50: Love**

They were finally there, at the Grey Havens, and Gimli couldn't come in. "We do not allow his kind."

How did this person not know of Legolas and Gimli, members of the Fellowship, saviors of Middle Earth? Gimli growled deep in his throat but looked more hurt than angry. Legolas wrapped one arm around the old dwarf that had been his best friend for half a century. "He will come in. We have people to see." Without waiting for confirmation, Legolas stepped off the boat, leading Gimli behind him, daring anyone to stop them.

After all, they were Legolas and Gimli. Their friendship was the stuff of legends.

**This turned out...interestingly chronological. It makes it seem more like one long story with a few highlighted parts, you know?**

**Again, pick your favorite moments and write them up in a review. We'll expand on one next chapter. Just...please review.**


	10. Interlude V

**_#16: Amazement_**

_Gimli looked from his sword, wavering in his unsteady hand, up at the stunned faces of Legolas and Aragorn. Before he knew it he was on the ground, blood pouring from a deep wound in his side._

_Later he woke to the staring bright eyes of that damned elf. "What do you want?" He asked, trying for gruff, ending up sounding like he felt…in pain. The elf said nothing, just nodded his head and re-wrapped Gimli's wound, his gentle fingers and wide eyes conveying his thanks to the dwarf who'd just saved all of their lives._

.***.

Legolas looked behind him for the hundredth time that day. No matter how often Gimli insisted he was "fine", it still held true that out of the four remaining members of the Fellowship it was the dwarf who had been most injured in the battle of Helm's Deep.

"You look uncomfortable, master dwarf." Legolas said lightly, eyes flitting to the stark white bandage on Gimli's forehead.

"Keep your eyes straight, laddie."

The tinkling laugh that issued from Legolas' mouth made the Rohirrim look up, startled, made Aragorn's lips twitch and Gandalf's eyes dance. It made Gimli _harrumph_ in annoyance. "Confound the elves and their awful horses."

"Take your mind off the horses, Gimli. Participate in a game with me." Legolas suggested. He, too, was weary from battle and the long day of riding. Isengard was another eight hours of tedious riding, with the horses having to pick their way delicately through the dense forest paths. He would be glad for the distraction of a contest.

"Most of the games I know can only be played with both feet firmly on the ground." Gimli mumbled.

"A riddling contest, then. Surely dwarves participate in the game of riddles?"

Here Gimli's eyes sparkled and his whole self became more animated. Chin raised, chest puffed out, face set, he said, proudly, "Aye. Dwarves are the best riddlers of any of the races, including devious elves." He thought for a moment, "All the riddles I know are in dwarvish…this is but a rough translation."

"All the riddles I know are in elvish. We are on an even playing field my friend."

Gimli nodded, eager to begin the game. "_Baruk! _This language!...What is so fragile that when you say its name, you break it?"

Another laugh, and Éomer kicked his horse lightly, making it trot closer. No one could resist the sound of an elf's laughter. "Strange that you would pick that one to begin, master dwarf. It is a riddle we teach to our youngest children. Silence. The answer is silence."

"If you think my puzzles are so easy, challenge me with one of your own!" Gimli said, caught up in his own bluster. He loved playing the game of riddles, had participated in many contests of wits in his younger years, and there was something about Legolas, his strange, outwardly calm demeanor, that made Gimli want to best him at every opportunity.

Legolas smiled, thinking of the perfect challenge. "Alright then…My back is adorned with feathers. I have a long neck and sharp nose. I am able to fly yet have no wings. What am I?"

Before Gimli could even begin to gnash his teeth over the problem, an arrow flew from the forest, embedding itself in Gimli's pack, its point scraping against his skin. At the same time, four other arrows were loosed into the crowd of horses and men.

Mayhem reigned for an instant. Horses bucked, soldiers yelled, swords were drawn. The attackers had not yet made themselves known and the chaos made the rustling leaves and loud breathing hard to notice. But Gimli was off his steed in an instant, brandishing his ax in the direction of the noise.

Before he could attack, another arrow, then another were loosed towards the horses, aiming for the king. Eomer's sword stopped the first, his back the second. Men swarmed towards him, one maneuvering his horse so it stood close enough to the captain the young lieutenant could prop Éomer up.

"Slimy orcs!" Gimli roared, diving in to the thick underbrush that surrounded the beaten path. There was a brief exchange of blows, a scream that suddenly cut off short, then nothing.

Legolas threw the reigns of the skittish horse to a young man and flew into the bushes, his feet barely touching the ground. Four feet in, the struggle made itself known with broken limbs and trampled bushes. Five feet past that was a dead orc…

…next to a wavering Gimli. Surrounding the dwarf were three other orcs, all dead, all with bows and sharp-pointed arrows strewn around their bodies. Gimli looked up from his ax, from the stolen, curved orc-sword he had stolen from one of the foul creatures, and his eyes met Legolas'.

In that instant, the world was reduced to the two of them in this clearing. Never before, or at least, not documented in any of the history books Legolas had spent his first two centuries studying, had there been a friendship like this, between an old, fair, dignified elf and a younger, hardy, proud dwarf. The two races weren't supposed to mix. They weren't supposed to like each other. They weren't supposed to forge friendships.

But in that instant, in the drawing of a single breath, the lone beat of the heart, when a pair of eyes met across a clearing strewn with evil and death, the two realized that for the first time in history there was an elf who cared whether a dwarf lived or died. There was a dwarf who cared to save an elf when his back was turned.

Of course, that instant, when the whole of the Earth seemed to stand still with the magnitude of the moment, was broken when Gimli hit the ground, blood pouring from his side.

.***.

Legolas sat vigil outside of the small tent that housed a sleeping mat and the dwarf, trying to ignore Aragorn's badly suppressed laughter. "Estel…"

"_Geheno nin, mellon." _Aragorn said, smile still seeping through. "It is only that I have not seen you fret like this since I was a hurt child and you were acting as a mother bear separated from her cub. I am jealous that your affections have been swayed from me."

"You no longer need protecting, Estel. And we are no longer children."

"Gimli needs no more protection than I, and he is certainly not a child." Aragorn moved closer, clasped his pipe between his lips and drew on it for several minutes, staring at the stars. The elves had taught him the wisdom of patience, of letting conversations be said in silence, the spaces between words.

"He was injured protecting my back."

"As you would have done for him." Aragorn said graciously. "You are a good person, _mi mellon_, and you would never let yourself be shown up by a dwarf."

Legolas flitted to his feet, the movement graceful, fluid in a way that Aragorn no longer noticed but caused several of the men to stare. Aragorn studied his friend for a long moment, chewing slowly on his pipe before rising to his feet in a calmer manner. "I need to attend to Éomer's wound. Can I trust that you will watch Gimli?"

"Of course." Legolas murmured, already retreating into the small tent.

The waning moon seeped through the crack in the fabric, casting a harsh, unforgiving light on Gimli who slept in a daze of pain, face drawn and pale. His wound, which had bled through the bandages Aragorn had wrapped hours ago, was black and ugly, and Legolas was drawn to it immediately. Elves have no innate gifts in healing though Aragorn, as Elrond's ward, had learned from the best. Still, the worst elf healer was tenfold better than the most accomplished healer amongst humans.

It was with the re-wrapping of the bandage that Gimli's eyes opened. Not with a flutter, a little at a time. Gimli moved as one accustomed to sudden battle; lax one moment, tense and ready the next. "What do you want?" He demanded gruffly, glaring daggers at Legolas' offending hands as they moved fluidly over the bandage.

"_Le hannon, _Gimli. Thank you, master dwarf." Legolas tightened the cloth and laid a cool hand against Gimli's hot skin, conveying thanks, support, concern. "Are your wounds paining you?"

"Nothing a dwarf can't handle." Gimli said, puffing out his chest slightly. "I took on four orcs in the time it took for you to calm the horse, Princeling."

"I found the carnage spectacular." Legolas assured him before starting to hum low in his throat. If he could see outside the tent, he would know that this hum –a song more beautiful than words – was driving the Rohirrim to madness. Like the laughter, the graceful movements, the songs of elves made the men giddy with a joy they had never felt before.

Gimli, as always, was less impressed, though for once he didn't command the elf to "stop the infernal racket." Instead, he took on a smug look as he settled down into the blankets. "Arrow."

"Aye, the arrow pierced your back, though not as deep as we had feared. Aragorn was able to save your spine."

"No." The smug look became downright arrogant as the dwarf stared down the elf. "...My back is adorned with feathers. I have a long neck and sharp nose. I am able to fly yet have no wings…it is your riddle, laddie. And I deduced the answer while swinging my way through orc bodies. An arrow."

Legolas' bubbling laughter drove the Rohhirim over the edge and many gathered around the tent, entranced by the sound. Gimli managed only a wry smile before succumbing to the herbs and injuries and falling asleep, content in the knowledge that he had bested the elf. Content in the knowledge that the elf would still be there when he awoke.

**Gimli and Legolas' friendship reminds us of…of Bones and Spock. Just six hundred years apart.**

**Anyways, please review. (Next, due to strangely popular demand, Éomer and his family.)**


	11. The Hobbits

**The Hobbits**

_"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."  
Elrond raised his eyes and looked at Frodo..."This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields, to shake the towers and counsels of the Great. Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it?" **The Fellowship of the Ring**_

**#1: Greens**

Pippin never liked eating his vegetables, because he never believed he'd get any taller, and, anyway, what was the fun in being tall? It seemed like the Big Folk were the ones that brought all the misery on the world. You don't see anybody giving rings to hobbits for safekeeping (the one Bilbo had didn't count…)

**#2: Only Brew**

They really needed to drink less, but there was no better feeling that coming home from the Green Dragon completely drunk and singing to the trees and the stars and the sky and, later, when they were back from that Journey, telling everyone within earshot exactly how many trolls they had taken down.

**#3: Save**

Once, on a November day that snapped with frost and bit with wind, Sam and Merry, only in their tweens, crossed the woods together, for once without their friends, hopping easily over streams and through thickets of thorns. When they sat down for the first time, Merry pulled roots out of the ground. "Are these edible, Sam?"

Something nagged in the back of Sam's brain and he frowned, looking at them. He threw an arm in front of Merry just before he placed one in his mouth. "Let's try them. Give them here." Sam reached for the roots and nibbled one end, flinching at the bitterness. "These are no good, Mr. Merry. Too salty." He threw them out of Merry's reach.

They were poisonous, extremely so. Within an hour Sam was stumbling, retching, vomiting, with Merry's worried hands on his back, his face, his high voice getting higher as Sam drifted into unconsciousness. The young gardener lived through the experience, though the herbalist who treated him said that, if Sam had been any smaller (like Merry's size) he would have surely died from the poison.

And that was the time Sam saved Merry's life.

**#4: Brothers**

None of them had any official brothers. Sam and Pippin had sisters, and Sam had male cousins that lived with him. Merry and Frodo were only children. Somehow, though, being around each other made up for the brothers they never had.

**#5: Home**

When Sam woke up in Gondor, he was in a white room, and Aragorn was with him. But what comforted him more was the sight of two hobbits, just his size, curled together at the foot of his bed, unwilling to leave their friend even in their sleep.

**#6: Split**

They were ten and fifteen when the Tooks and Brandybucks decided that, perhaps, Merry and Pippin spending every waking minute together was unhealthy. In an attempt to encourage the young hobbits to make new friends, Merry was sent to Bilbo and Pippin to the Proudfoots on the edge of the Old Forest.

The third night, Frodo, who was also staying at Bag End for the summer, was awakened by the sound of his cousin n the next room. Thinking that Merry was lonely, he slipped out of bed to comfort the younger boy, and was happy but not surprised to find Pippin, face red and eyes bright, sitting in the bed with Merry, laughing.

**#7: Weather Top**

It wasn't something anyone brought up without Frodo talking about it first. Weather Top was their first big mistake, back when they could still afford mistakes. If it had been two or three or eight months later, none of it would have happened. They could have fought better, hid better, run further….

No one talked about Weather Top, but all four hobbits remembered the terror of that night, the awful cold feeling that settled into their stomachs when nine un-dead Kings surrounded the lonely hill. Cold as despair, as nothingness, as if they'd never be happy again.

**#8: Poems**

Few people knew that, when poems echoed in the town square during the long, cold months of winter when riddling contests and poetry recitations were the only things to break the monotony, it was Sam who took first place, every time, a dark horse with his red face and hair, his long, slow smile, his voice which could transport the listener in a single sentence, a single word.

**#9: Roles**

Frodo was the oldest, but also the most scatterbrained, the one who lost track of time and misplaced his books, the one who led with the carelessness of one who was used to others following, with the gentleness of one who understood responsibility.

Sam was the keeper of everyone, the one who'd worked since he was young and was passionate about gardening, food, words, and Rosie Cotton. He was the one who loved the fiercest, the one who remained unchanged, unwavering, the one who needed the Shire almost as much as he needed Frodo to be there with him.

Merry was a rock, solid, steady, the middle child of the group. Peacemaker though he may be, he had a prankster heart with a large soft spot for Pippin. He was fiercely protective of his younger cousin, undyingly loyal to Frodo, and more than a little in awe of Sam.

Pippin was the gentle soul who looked for each new day, for adventures and new ideas and learning experiences. He was surprisingly good at puzzles and understood human dynamics without thinking. A social, amicable soul, he got on with about everyone he met, which is why witnessing war was so devastating on his innocent mind.

**#10: Death**

When Frodo was told of his parents' demise, he didn't understand the concept of death. It was only when he felt his bed creak under the weight of two other young bodies, felt tiny hands grab at his hair, his clothes, struggling to comfort in their own grief, that he realized death meant he'd never see his parents again.

**#11: Tall**

Most hobbits never even realize they're short compared to the rest of the world. Most hobbits only ever come into contact with Big Folk whenever Gandalf comes to town. But, in Gondor, with a nation of joyful people bowing at their feet, the four hobbits realized what it was like to be tall.

**#12: Kith**

Sam was the only one not related by blood. Oh, he was probably a distant relation, after all hobbits were notorious for inter-mingling, as they liked nothing better than large families with plenty of children, but Frodo, Merry, and Pippin were no further apart than second cousins. That never mattered, though, because when it came right down to it, Pippin felt closer to Sam than he did his own sisters, and Merry would gladly have laid down his life if it meant Sam being alive in his stead.

Frodo had only to smile, blue eyes sparkling, to let Sam know that he was the most important person in Frodo's life, and that had nothing to do with blood and everything to do with friendship.

**#13: Kin**

Merry began half-heartedly dating Pearl Took when he was in his tweens, partly because he thought it was expected of him but mostly because he wanted to be a part of Pippin's family for real. He stopped after a few weeks when Pippin, guessing his cousin's motives said, in their most serious conversation to date, that Merry was already his family, and nothing would ever change that.

**#14: With You**

No matter what Gandalf or Elrond or the other higher-ups thought, all the hobbits knew that there was no way Merry and Pippin were staying out of the adventure or a life time.

**#15: Injuries**

All Merry was told was that there were injuries, just injuries. He'd been spirited away from the Black Gate in a journey that he could never recall years later. Pippin was no longer by his side, and he'd been riding with Legolas, who was minus Gimli. When they got back to Gondor, Merry fell into such a sleep he didn't awake for two days.

"Come, Frodo and Sam have been found." He was stirred by Gimli, and threw his arms around the dwarf, who he hadn't expected to ever see again. "Pippin?" He questioned.

As they walked, Gimli told him about finding Pippin buried beneath a troll, about cracked ribs and broken bones. "He hasn't woken yet."

When Merry entered the room, he was surprised and pleased, thankful for whatever kind soul had thought of putting all the hobbits in one room. Aragorn was there, and the king glanced up from his work, told him it might be a while before his cousins and Sam would awaken. Merry nodded, yawned again, and curled up beside Pippin, one arm thrown over Sam, and for the first time in many months fell asleep between people who were the same size as he.

**#16: Food**

When they got back to Gondor, Frodo and Sam's stomachs couldn't take too much food at once, though they ate constantly, bites here and bites there, and Merry and Pippin helped them, because no hobbit of the Shire should ever go hungry.

**#17: Funeral**

They are all there when Frodo's parents were buried. Everyone cried, even Frodo, who was pretending to be so grown up, though he wasn't older than ten. Somehow, a chain was created; Merry, toddling Pippin clutched in his arms, Pip's tiny fingers curling through Sam's hair, Merry touching Frodo's hand, Frodo clutching desperately at Sam's shirt, unwilling, unable to let go.

**#18: Keep Holding On**

For a while, they tried to convince Frodo not to leave, not to go to the Grey Havens. In the end, even Sam realized how worn his master was getting. Somehow, when they got to the docks, he found the strength somewhere inside of himself to let go.

**#19: Titles**

"You need not call us mister anymore, Sam." Pippin teased. They were well over a hundred years old, and the old command had become a joke among what was left of the Fellowship.

"It makes me itchy when people call me mister, Mr. Pippin, for I'm only the son of a working hobbit, and you are gentle hobbits."

Merry clasped his old friend's hand. "And you are a Ring bearer, Master Samwise. Don't ever forget that."

**#20: Sleep**

The other members of the Fellowship never objected when the four hobbits slept on top of each other, faces and heads and legs tangling like so many dogs, because when they woke up, for a moment, there'd be small smiles on their faces, and though the men and the dwarf and the elf and the slightly senile old wizard had few chances to smile and even less to sleep, it didn't mean the tiny hobbits had to abide by that way of living.

**#21: Slurs**

"I don't believe all of this Sauron business. You know who I blame? Those strange 'uns coming out of the North with their little Ring making like they own the whole Earth. All my brothers died because of them. What I wouldn't give to wring the neck of that little -"

To be fair, Merry and Pippin were right behind him, but it was Sam who got to the man first, bristling, fists held high, eyes flashing, wondering if the man knew exactly how may orcs he'd killed during his trek through Mordor.

**#22: Rejection**

Frodo was twenty-three, out at the Green Dragon with his friends, including thirteen year old Pippin. He was stuttering to a girl, trying to get words out. "A-Actually, I like going outside the Sh-Shire. _Lle naa vanima_ it m-means -." He never got any further. The girl looked over him, saw a group of friends, and smiled at him as she left.

Sam tried to hide the smile in his drink, but Merry was the one who slapped him on the back, guffawing. "Frodo, you know that girls like hearing they're beautiful. Just not in elvish."

**#23: AWOL**

Merry and Pippin would leave, get out of the Shire, just _go_ as often as they could after the Breaking of the Fellowship. Sam and Frodo would watch, and wait, content in knowing that they would return.

And when they did, there'd always be a fire in Bag End, biscuits and tea and apples laid out of the table, a neat note written out next to it: _Welcome Home_.

**#24: Carvings**

They celebrated Halloween in Gondor, three weeks after the war ended. It was a Shire tradition, one that everyone participated in and no one knew the origins of. Pippin was seen that week walking through the streets, a pumpkin bigger than his whole body cradled in his arms.

He had to stand on a chair to extract the guts from the pumpkin, and by the time he had a knife in his hand he had a gathering of his friends to watch. "Pip, you make a pretty scary Jack-O-Lantern."

Frodo grinned in agreement. "You better hope Gandalf doesn't see it."

"He's the one who told me to carve it." Pippin said, turning the pumpkin around to display the White Wizard. Even after the battles, the beasts, the deaths, Mithrandir was still the scariest thing he knew.

**#25: Night**

It was worse at night. "What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing, Frodo, go back to sleep." Merry held Pippin's hand, rubbed his thumb over the back of it smoothly, carefully. "He'll be alight."

"How long has he been having night terrors?" Sam asked quietly, his voice a breath in the dark a second before he lit a match, illuminating the room and his pale, pale face.

Merry didn't want to tell them, because it was Pip's secret and he should divulge it to who he deemed necessary, but they would find out anyway. The four hobbits always seemed to find out things about each other, things no one else knew. "Since before Fangorn." Merry paused for a moment, then lifted Pippin's thin sleep-shirt to reveal the long stripes that had come with their captivity at the hands of the orcs. He had matching ones on his back, though they were far fewer in number: a handful to Pippin's dozen.

Frodo and Sam's mouths settled into hard lines but they said nothing, not then, because these things were always worse at night. Or so they hoped.

**#26: Alternate Universe**

"Where's Pippin?" All around the room, faces blanched at the name, worried eyes flitted over to Merry, whose face was carefully blank, who would never admit that he'd spent the days and weeks on the battle field, hoping he could be killed so he could see his cousin again.

Since they first met in Isengard, the rest of the small Fellowship had been careful not to say his name, not to even mention he was missing, gone forever, but they'd all heard Merry's snuffling cries at night, could all imagine what it had been like, watching the child he'd known since they were small be beaten to death by a band of orcs.

"Pippin…" Merry said slowly, relishing the feel of the name on his lips, "Pippin would have been very happy you are safe, Cousin." He choked on something in the back of his throat, tried again, "Very happy."

Sam threw an arm around Frodo, Frodo held out both of his so that he could hug Merry as he had so many times before. And the little circle of hobbits was closed once again, minus the one who had mattered most of all.

**#27: Babysitting**

Frodo was once again on cousin duty, watching Merry and Pippin when he really wanted to stay at Trolo Proudfoot's birthday. But the little ones were too little to keep awake the whole night and Frodo was voted out of the table, a helpful Sam trailing in his wake.

"Thanks, Sam." Frodo muttered, hosting Pip, barely three higher up on his waist, feeling the tiny hand rest on the back of his neck and relaxing to the touch. "You didn't have to do this."

"Sure I did, Mr. Frodo." Merry's hands were twined with Sam's and the younger child was stumbling along the short path, rubbing eyes bleary with sleep. "You know I like little ones more than speeches anyway."

"Still…" Frodo stared at Sam, wondering where the working boy's loyalty came from, wondering if he deserved any of it.

**#28: Rescue**

"Can't we keep him?"

Frodo stared, exasperated, at Merry. "No. He'll grow to be bigger than Pip and eat you both in your sleep."

Merry wrapped his hands tighter around the dog and stared at Frodo. "C'mon, Cousin, you won't get in trouble. Just say we snuck him into the house."

"You were going to sneak him into the house." Sam put in, "We just caught you."

"And if you hadn't, you wouldn't get in trouble." Pippin reasoned, also putting his arms around the dog, who was large and fluffy and a gorgeous shade of russet-red. "Please?"

No one could ever say no to Merry and Pippin when they were earnest. "Fine. But if Bilbo catches you, I don't know anything about any old dog."

**#29: Watcher**

Legolas watched the hobbits file into the crowded room, stand on tip-toe to reach the counter and order drinks, ignore the taunts of the drunken soldiers around them, and take seats at a table, sitting on their knees to reach it. He tilted his head and watched as Sam caught the flask newly nine-fingered Frodo was about to drop and raised an eyebrow when something Pippin said made the others snort into their drinks, spraying liquid everywhere.

He was fifteen feet away, standing with steadfast Gimli and a crowd of others, and had never felt more like an outsider.

**#30: And All Were Young**

The four had gone to have a picnic by a lazy stream running through a small offshoot of The Old Forest. Pippin, the youngest at almost nine, went off to pick flowers while Frodo, Merry, and Sam settled down with books and pipes and lazy stories, prepared to watch the afternoon turn into evening in the slow, methodical way of the world.

When the sun was hovering just below the branches of the trees, Merry glanced about. Frodo was asleep, the sun bouncing of his black curls and the soft leather of the book clutched in one hand. Sam was stoking the tiny fire, which crackled under his ministrations. "Where's Pip?" Merry asked, glancing about slowly at first, then with more urgency.

He remembered how his heart had stilled in his chest, how Sam had splashed into the stream even as Merry's own legs were rooted to the ground. He remembered Pippin's lips, tinged blue after being face down in the water. He remembered the tinkling laugh that shattered through his own self-doubt, the tiny arms that through themselves over his shoulders and squeezed hard, making Merry wish they'd never let go.

**#31: Darkest Before…**

It was always the bleakest nights, when all hope seemed lost and the Fellowship on the brink of despair, that Frodo would ask, suddenly, if the other hobbits wanted to hear a story of the Shire, one he'd told a thousand times before. Inevitably, the whole Fellowship would listen, add their own tales, and suddenly dawn didn't seem that far off.

**#32: Pain**

He was grieving, and so angry at his aunt for sending little Pippin to his care the week of the anniversary of his parents' deaths. With no Bilbo around for advice and sympathy, Frodo turned the pain inward until it started eating him up from the inside, until it burned white hot and angry.

Merry found Frodo on the floor, tiny Pippin in his arms, the young boy pulling on his cousin's hair as Frodo wept, Pippin's soft, worried soprano running over words the tot had heard often, though had never repeated with a black eye, a bruised lip, _I'll be okay...it'll be okay._

**#33: Happiness**

Happiness was cake and dancing, whirling in circles under the stars; it was sitting for an afternoon to watch the movement of wind through the garden you'd worked on all week; it was coming home to find your friends and cousins already waiting for you, swapping tales and dares and riddles before looking up at you and smiling, as if it was you they'd been waiting for all along.

**#34: Teacher**

"It's okay Frodo, we don't really need to learn history, anyway."

Frodo groaned at Merry's voice, which carried a smile in the tone, and wondered if other teachers had students who chattered merrily to each other, to Sam, working outside, to themselves, but who, in an entire week of learning, had yet to know which subject they were taking.

**#35: Sibling**

It was a month after the funeral, and Merry and Pippin had accompanied Frodo down to the market. Picking through the vegetables, it was Merry who heard first, and tried to turn Frodo away. "Terrible, terrible." The old hobbit woman was saying, running her hand over the cloth she was looking to buy. "And with Primula that far along with child? Such a tragedy."

"Frodo?" Merry whispered, his childish voice high and worried, "Frodo, I'm so -" But Frodo was gone, fleeing the scene, the crowd, his cousins, running until he forgot about siblings and babies and the curve of his mother's belly, sinking beneath the waves.

**#36: Fellowship**

They'd been walking as long as they could in the knee-deep snow, but at mid-morning, when the blizzard sent drifts up to the men's waists, it was Gimli, the smallest, who first bent down, letting Pippin scramble feather-light on his back. Legolas took Merry on his shoulders, the men carried Frodo and Sam in their arms, letting the young hobbits bury their faces into cloth, away from the snow and cold, their murmurs of _thank you_ lost to the wind.

**#37: Distraction**

Frodo paddled across the river Anduin, Sam in the back, tears streaking down their faces at the thought of the two hobbits, not even of age, offering to be the distraction so that Frodo could get out alive.

**#38: Age**

"He is so small!" Boromir remarked on the third day of their journey into the mountains, watching Pippin bound past him before stopping suddenly, letting himself fall backward into the grass, peals of laughter echoing from his throat.

"He isn't of age yet, sir." Sam explained, tugging the Pony behind him. "Neither him nor mister Merry. Pippin is but twenty-five, barely a tween."

Aragorn, near at hand, explained that twenty-five to a hobbit was twelve or thirteen to a man, that even Frodo, the oldest at thirty-six years, was but twenty by man's reckoning. Boromir gazed at the tiny beings, snaking easily between branches and vines at the man's hip level, and wondered who had permitted children on such a dangerous quest.

**#39: Natural**

It was Sam who pulled them from their beds, from their memories and dreams of bumps and bruises, of flame and death and battle and despair. It was Sam who led them down a flight of white stairs through a healing Gondor, Sam who brought along spades and shovels, Sam who lowered himself onto his knees first, pulling up fistfuls of weeds, replacing them with flowers that a war-city had not had time to tend. And, after watching him for a moment, the other hobbits fell into place beside him, doing what is natural to help a city get back onto its feet.

**#40: Away**

The tiny fingers poked at his, tried to find his grasp, but Merry shook them off, shouldering a pack and running to catch up with Frodo. "Go away, Pip!" At the tiny whimper, Merry knelt next to the four-year-old, no more than a foot tall, "It's just holiday, kiddo. I'll be back in three weeks." He let a grin fly across his face as he lifted Pippin's chin up. "Wait for me, okay, Pip?" He got up, tossed over his shoulder, "Three weeks, that's all."

**#41: Friend**

"Good mornin', little Pip." Sam peered at Pippin over the top of his basket of clippings, a smile twitching at the ends of his lips. The four-year-old was sitting on the edge of a small hill, looking at the spot his cousin and favored playmate had left several hours before. "Little Pip, I'm feeling terrible lonesome without mister Frodo around. He usually talks to me while I garden, you see." The young hobbit put the basket down carefully, bent to one knee, looking the tot in the face. "Would you mind being my friend until he comes back?"

And Pippin, always a giving soul, threw his arms around the older boy and said, solemnly, that of course he would be Sam's friend, for a little while, until their own came back from across the Shire.

They were friends for life.

**#42: Savior**

"Thank you, cousin Frodo." Merry said quietly, his hand slipping quietly into Frodo's, head bowed so his black eye was invisible. Next to him, Pippin repeated the same words, his own hands squirming into Merry's, then Sam's.

Sam for his part, said his thank-yous after they'd dropped the others at Brandybuck Hall. "I couldn't've taken them all on, Mr. Frodo, and the two little ones were crying so."

Frodo absentmindedly patted Sam's arm, eyes fixing on a point off in the distance. "I'm glad I was walking by when I did, Sam. Ten against three isn't a fair fight at all." He paused, stared at his gardener for a moment. "Thank you for looking after my cousins, Sam. It seems as if you've taken the worst of the injuries." His hand flitted for an instant above a cut, swollen lips and cheeks, a broken nose.

Unused to praise, especially from the very person he so idolized, Sam blushed, "'Twas still all down to you, Mr. Frodo. I didn't know you were so handy with a slingshot."

**#43: Lothlorien**

The Shire, with its quiet streams and gentle hills and soft Earth, was where the simple hobbit-folk belonged. They didn't wage wars against other peoples because there was nothing, not land nor riches nor men, that the hobbits needed or desired. They had everything in the Shire. They had their life in that little land that was so dear to them.

Before Lothlorien, all four hobbits would swear that, though Rivendell was wonderful, and Weathertop was awe-inspiring, and the Misty Mountains were beautiful and terrible, there was no place that could hold a candle to the Shire. Before Lothlorien, the hobbits were so sure that they had the best home on Middle Earth.

**#44: Worry**

Frodo streaked after Merry, running blindly, lopsidedly, until he was able to catch up to his more able-bodied friend. Sam was stumbling along at their sides, feeling the injuries of Mount Doom, the talons of eagles, the exhaustion of months breathing ash and fire… "Mr. Merry?"

For Merry had collapsed at the side of an eleven-year-old boy and began crying in earnest, and it took Frodo several minutes until he saw what the green of the cloak and curls of the hair must have looked like from the third tier of the citadel. "Oh, Merry. It's not him, it's not him…"

They found Pippin six hours later, buried in one of the carts returning from The Black Gate, bruised and pained but very much alive. And yet, when Merry finally closed his eyes that night, one hand wrapped in the warmth of his Pippin's, he still saw that eleven-year-old boy, dead and forgotten in the heat of battle.

**#45: New Year Resolutions**

Hobbits didn't celebrate the New Year like the humans did, in the cold of December. They marked the passing of time with the moon, the crops, the harvest, and, especially, birthdays. Calendars were, of course, kept, and started anew in January, but it was no more than another party to the tiny folk.

So when they were asked to give their resolutions for the first time, it's not really that odd that they were all remarkably similar: keep each other alive, at least for a little while longer.

**#46: Ease**

Whenever they were lonely, hurt, despairing against hopeless odds, all the hobbits had to think about was those years in the Shire, when time passed with ease over the hobbit friends, when the grass tickled beneath their tiny bodies, when the wind blew the scents of ponies and harvest and springs, when they were happy.

**#47: Secrecy**

Even the sorriest hobbit can carry a tune, and loved to sing. So the hobbits couldn't figure out why the rest of the Fellowship started going on about "giving away the position" when they started singing while bathing in the Anduin.

**#48: Reasons Why**

They grew old in the Shire, happy to be away from adventures and peril, and every time one of the four hobbits were asked how they made it through such Big and Noisy things with their heads on straight, each would answer, either out loud or to themselves, that they each had three reasons to keep themselves alive, to keep going, because hobbits have to stick together, right?

**#49: Clothes**

Ever since they were little, the four had been swapping clothes left and right. Merry would absent-mindedly put on his older cousin's waistcoat while staying at Bag End. Pippin would go home to find Sam's coat draped over his shoulders. Pippin's gloves ended up on Frodo's hands, Merry's scarf became Sam's favorite article of winter clothing.

None of them minded in the least, because, really, what were friends for if not giving each other the shirt of their backs?

**#50: Love**

It was intangible for the most part, unspoken. It was in the lessons, the games, the parties, in the long quiet summer evenings, in helping in the garden, in singing and dancing and playing and fighting and living against all the odds. Yes, the four hobbits rarely spoke of the love that existed so palpably between them, because actions, as always, spoke volumes louder than words.

**We know we said Eomer was next, but we couldn't leave these poor hobbits alone. He's coming, we promise, but the hobbits are just so _cute_.**

**As always, when you review, mention which one is your favorite. It may get turned into a one-shot...**


	12. Interlude VI

_**#25: Night**_

_It was worse at night. "What's wrong with him?"_

_"Nothing, Frodo, go back to sleep." Merry held Pippin's hand, rubbed his thumb over the back of it smoothly, carefully. "He'll be alight."_

_"How long has he been having night terrors?" Sam asked quietly, his voice a breath in the dark a second before he lit a match, illuminating the room and his pale, pale face._

_Merry didn't want to tell them, because it was Pip's secret and he should divulge it to who he deemed necessary, but they would find out anyway. The four hobbits always seemed to find out things about each other, things no one else knew. "Since before Fangorn." Merry paused for a moment, then lifted Pippin's thin sleep-shirt to reveal the long stripes that had come with their captivity at the hands of the orcs. He had matching ones on his back, though they were far fewer in number: a handful to Pippin's dozen._

_Frodo and Sam's mouths settled into hard lines but they said nothing, not then, because these things were always worse at night. Or so they hoped._

_.***._

Merry rubbed one hand across Pippin's collar bone, trying to soothe the younger hobbit's nightmares. Pippin's face was screwed up in pain, in fear, and Merry knew, as he always knew stuff about his cousin, that Pip was back in the orc camp.

He brooded, something that Merry didn't do very often. He'd always prided himself on being, along with Sam, the firm, even-tempered rock at the center of their group of four. Here, under the beautiful drooping trees with their foliage thick in the early summer air, it was hard to imagine the atrocities of war that had taken place a scant three months prior.

Sam woke before he got farther in his reverie, before he'd plunged down into the same black abyss Pippin found himself trapped in now. "Mr. Merry? Is everything alright?"

Merry turned to Sam and twitched his lips slightly, a sign that everything was still safe, if not secure. "You're a Ring-bearer now, Sam, you saved all of Middle Earth. How many times do we have to tell you to stop calling us Mister?"

"Always once more, Mr. Merry." Sam said, inching closer. He clung to his roots as working hobbit the same way Merry and Pippin clung to their worn and beaten pipes: because it was something familiar to hang onto in this world of big folk and magic rings and wars.

Their quiet words had woken Frodo from his half-doze. Frodo didn't sleep anymore, not really. He'd seen too much of death to really be confident that he would wake up if he let himself go into that halfway place, that dream world.

"What's wrong with Pip?" Frodo asked. He'd watched as each of the Fellowship members in turn fell in love with the youngest of the hobbits, but Pippin had been at the center of his heart long before the Quest.

Merry rubbed soft circles on Pippin's collar bone, mouth pressing into a hard line as Pippin's soft whimpers became keens of pain. He looked over at Gimli, sleeping next to Legolas, at Gandalf, keeping watch over the night. None of them turned, though whether it was because they hadn't heard or because they knew, instinctively, that this was for the hobbits alone, Merry never knew.

"It's alright, Frodo, go back to sleep."

The order was useless, of course. They were cousins, but that didn't explain the bond between them. Merry had many, many cousins, some closer to him in age than this newly nine-fingered Frodo. No, they were best friends, souls who must have known each other in the life that came before that they had now on this Earth. The four of them had a bond that transcended earth and time.

Sam crept closer, head tilted slightly to the side. He'd seen these things happen before, to his uncle. "How long has he been having night terrors?"

Merry hesitated. This was Pippin's secret, and though Merry trusted Sam and Frodo with his life, it was Pippin whom he would die for, Pippin whom he would never, could never betray. But in that moment, with dawn not even a thought on the horizon, Merry realized that there was another bond that linked him to Frodo and Sam, made them ideal to confide in where Strider and Legolas and Faramir could never compare or understand. They were hobbits all, and hobbits took care of their own.

"They started happening in Fangorn," Merry said. This time he didn't hesitate. This time he reached forward and slowly, gently lifted Pippin's sleeping-shirt to reveal the long stripes that had come with their captivity at the hands of the orcs. They glinted cruelly in the twinkling starlight, scars, war-wounds that didn't belong in the peaceful forest.

It wasn't until Merry saw the wounds bared, felt the numb throb of pain ripple over his own back, that he realized he had never told anyone what had happened in that orc camp. It was their tale, of course, one that made the bond between himself and Pippin, already strong as iron, stronger still.

But Frodo and Sam had related to the other hobbits the painful details of their travels through Mordor, heartbreaking stories that they hadn't told Strider or Gandalf, despite their many insistences to record everything for posterity. Some things were best left between hobbits.

And Frodo and Sam were looking at Merry, not backing away from the wounds and going back to the sleep they all craved desperately after the many months on the road. Merry continued to rub Pippin's chest, noticing quiet tears dripping down the youngest hobbit's face. He told the story.

"We worked out early on the orcs thought we were you two, that we had the Ring. Didn't expect there to be more hobbits, I guess. We knew they were taking us to Isengard, that we'd be tortured there and they'd kill us when they found we had nothing. I guess they thought they could just start early. The journey was getting long and they were getting bored."

Merry shuddered, remembering the bright blaze of the campfire, the terrible laughter of the orcs as they pulled Pippin out from under Merry's arm, dragging him to the center of the crowd.

"They wanted to eat us you know," Merry said, surprised that he laughed a little when he said this. "Hack off our arms or legs, because they had really rotten…I don't know why I'm laughing." But Merry was, reams of laughter exploding through the fingers that he'd clamped over his mouth in an effort to fight back the hysterics.

"Sometimes it's either laugh or cry, Mr. Merry." Sam said knowingly.

The bubbles of laughter eventually died down, and when they left it was as if the forest was suddenly missing something. An owl hooted dolefully in the distance, a mournful sound that Merry could relate to.

"I guess they took Pip 'cause he'd made a break for it the day before, running to the side in order to leave a breadcrumb for Strider and Legolas and Gimli. Or maybe they took him because I was sick and I wouldn't be as much fun. Or maybe because he was smaller. I don't know…"

Merry found himself touching his temple, to the place where a thin white scar ran down his cheek, another left-over from the orcs.

"It was the Uruk'hai who did it, you know. The orcs and goblins…they were afraid of these big ones, I think, but they also enjoyed the pain. When the Uruk'hai pushed Pip into the center, they were all jeering, clapping. They wanted _entertainment_." Merry's voice broke on the word and Frodo opened his mouth to say something, probably along the lines of _you don't have to tell us, cousin_, but Merry cut him off before he began.

"I need to tell it, cousin Frodo. This story can no longer be mine alone."

But the other details came in stutters, as Merry watched the instant replay in his mind. How the Uruk'hai didn't let Pippin remove his own tunic but ripped all the clothes from his body, leaving Pip naked and shivering in the cool night air.

How at first the orcs weren't hurting but touching, groping, poking and prodding Pip, always with threats to cut off one of his or, worse, Merry's limbs if he tried to run. How when the whip was pulled out, Pippin didn't scream until the fourth stroke, and by the sixth Merry was tottering over, his body hot with fever and rage at the sight of his favorite person being subjected to such torture.

How the whip rained down on his own back, on his legs, how he'd collapsed to the ground, shaking the throes of his sickness, and how Pippin had leapt on top of him, protecting, hiding, taking blow after blow as the crowd of monsters laughed and laughed and laughed…

The words were forced out by the end, and Merry was crying with the effort of it all, with the sheer emotion that came with remembering.

Frodo used the heel of his hand to wipe the tears from Merry's face, and Sam put his arm around Merry's shoulders, holding him tight in an embrace that was entirely comforting, sympathetic.

And, over Merry's head, Sam and Frodo exchanged a glance, one that willed away the pain of Merry's story. They looked at each other and nodded slowly, sadly. These things were always worse at night.

Or so they hoped.

**We wanted to tell the story and try to explain the relationship between these hobbits. They're just so cute...**

**As always, please review.**


	13. Rohan

**Rohan**

_**Theoden: **So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?  
**Aragorn:** Ride out with me. Ride out and meet them.  
**Theoden: **For death and glory.  
**Aragorn: **For Rohan. For your people.  
**Theoden: **The Horn of Helm Hammerhand will sound in the deep, one last time!_

**#1: Lingerings**

Strange, how the words of strangers from the North stayed with him days after they passed each other on the plains. Éomer thought of the outlandish nature of the encounter for days. A man, an elf, a dwarf, flying across the forsaken space so quickly in pursuit of…hobbits. That was the word. He asked around his troop and learned of other monikers. Halflings. Shire folk.

_Only children to your eyes._ Had he really killed children? In his haste to rid his land of the foul creatures, had he slaughtered the innocent?

In the days after being banished, that was the thought that stayed with him. He thought not of his uncle, aged and decrepit before his time, or his sister, or his cousin, his best friend, dying alone. He thought of that one sentence _Only children…only children to your eyes._

**#2: Idol**

Théodred loved Éomer like a brother. In fact, he loved Éomer more than anyone in the world. His cousin was a year older and, in the Prince's eyes, far cooler than he was. Everything Théodred did in his life was to be more like his cousin, closer to his cousin. He appreciated and desired Eomer's praise more than his own father's.

On the day he died, he kept calling for his favorite person in all the world. And Éomer never answered.

**#3: Outsider**

Éomer had this amazing relationship with Théodred, who had an easy relationship with his father, the King Théoden. The King loved Éomer because he was smart and strong and became the leader of the Rohirrim army at the age of nineteen.

And through all this Éowyn was like an outsider looking in on a world of boys, a world she would never, could never be a part of.

**#4: Partner**

It was so easy to fight alongside Aragorn. He was a charismatic leader just like Éomer, fought for his friends, protected his soldiers, was ready to lay down his life for the sake of a single man. Outside of war time they would have been good allies, and later in life they became good friends.

But in the beginning, Éomer was so willing to fight beside this Ranger from the North because he reminded him of his dead cousin.

**#5: Horses**

A word has to be said about the horses of Rohan. They came first, always, in the mind of the men there. They were transportation, they were power over enemies, but mostly they were loyal companions. A Rohirrim boy could ride well and straight by the time they were seven, but he also knew how to muck out a stable, how to replace a thrown shoe, how to care for his horse.

Everyone had their favorite horse. They were steadfast friends, sometimes the only friend one has in a world that was filled with battles, foes, meanness. One just had to look at one of the beautiful beasts to remember what they were fighting for: the right to be the Home of the Horselords once more.

**#6: Banishment**

He was banished by his uncle, a man who'd taken him and his sister in when they were young and scared and orphaned. A man who'd given him tutors, who'd given him his first horse, who'd given him his own army, when he was old enough. A man who he loved as a father.

To be banished, to be forced to leave his home, was awful in its own right, but to see his uncle's signature at the bottom of the order…it made Éomer ride away from his home with a awful, sad, bitter taste in his mouth. He could never go home again.

**#7: Antics**

As children they were terrors. Éowyn, bless her female heart, was often left out. She was younger. She was a girl. She was taken in by the maids and taught to cook, to keep house and learn figures. It was Éomer and Théodred (and later their names would blend together, EomerandTheodred, because they were so often together) who turned the house upside-down. They switched the salt and the sugar. They filled the Golden Hall with hay.

And when they were inevitably caught, they'd grin cheekily and blame each other, in unison, pointing fingers and hiding grins. No one could ever stay mad at them.

**#8: Friendly Fire**

It was their first hunt with just the two of them, and things went badly from the beginning. It rained, then the temperature dropped below freezing and they had to huddle together for warmth. And the next day…

"Éomer!" They'd split up, and he knew they should be together for the first kill, but the movement in the bushes, so close, was too much to resist. He steadied his bow…

The shout of pain was definitely human, and he recognized the voice. "Éomer?" he left his bow, left his sword, raced through the bushes until he was six inches from his cousin, standing in a puddle of blood.

The worst part was Eomer's stare, so confused, so hurt, and he looked from the arrow to him, as his lips mouthed the word "Théodred?"

He still looked confused when he passed out cold three seconds later.

**#9: Phrase**

"I know your face."

It had become their greeting, their good luck charm. King Théoden had often told Éowyn that she looked so much like her mother that it made him do a double take. On the day he had welcomed her into his house, he'd paused and stared at her so intently Éomer, older and trying to take up the mantle of an adult, had cleared his throat. "I know your face." Théoden said after a time. And Éowyn had smiled and dipped her head, taking the greeting easily, happily, never knowing that these first words would also be the last her adopted father would ever speak to her.

**#10: Goodnight**

Their rooms were in a little block. "Goodnight Théodred." Here Éomer would lean over and hit his cousin lightly. They always slept side by side.

"Goodnight Éomer." Théodred would snap, then, louder, "Goodnight Éowyn!"

"Goodnight Théodred! Goodnight, brother!"

"Goodnight Éowyn!" Éomer would call back.

On cue, the King would grunt unhappily from his sleeping room, "Goodnight! Now be quiet!"

**#11: Cooking**

She burned everything: meet, vegetables. The kitchen women claimed she'd even burnt water, once. So Éowyn had no idea how she ended up being the one making stew on the battlefields, serving it to the starving and seeing their expressions: mixture of gratitude and pain, because she knew, as well as they did, that her food was just so _awful_…

**#12: Royal**

Strange, how Éomer and Éowyn had never sought the crown, had never had any inclination for politics save for the few things they could do to help their uncle and cousin. Strange, how Éomer, named heir in Théodred's dying breath, became the Blessed King anyway. Strange, how Éowyn fell in love with the man who, save for Aragorn, would have been Steward of the nation of Gondor.

Strange how they ended up being royalty anyway.

**#13: Drinking**

The first night of hard drinking came after Eomer's first battle. Théoden had chosen the time – Éomer was fifteen, headstrong and eager. Théodred had begged to go along to battle, if only to watch his best friend's back. But he was the heir apparent. He would have his own time.

But this was about the drinking, when Éomer staggered in with the others, covered in dirt and grabbing Theodred's shoulder, urging him to come along. They sat down and Éomer downed mug after mug. By the end tears streamed down his cheeks as he tried to explain the horrors of war. No words came.

He drank some more.

**#14: Trapped**

"Théodred. Théodred!"

"Mmm…"

"Shh…we need to get out of here. Before they wake up." _Before they kill us_.

"Too tired, 'Mer. You can go without me."

"You're bleeding, cousin. You think I would leave you behind?" _To die?_

"I'm sorry…"

"Théodred. Théodred! Wake up!"

**#15: Watch**

It had worked out better than he could have imagined, this arrangement to take in the orphans abandoned so suddenly. Théodred had a playmate, a best friend, somebody to compete against. Éowyn brought a feminine touch to a palace that was so desperately in need of one, a voice of reason for a king too proud to know he needed an advisor.

And Théoden watched them grow up, thinking that, perhaps, he may die in peace if these three were his successors.

**#16: Death**

Éomer rode from Rohan, hoping that, maybe, he'd return to find his best friend alive, on the mend. Théodred had survived the battle, the hard ride. He'd survived that first fateful night.

He got news of his cousin's death only after the battle of Helm's Deep, after finding his sister and taking her hand. One look and he knew. One look, and he felt like his world had shattered. What use was Rohan without its Prince? What use was Rohan without its heart?

**#17: Strength **

He was not a strong king. He wasn't as strong as his ancestors and he wasn't as strong as the children that would follow him. It was a Ranger from the North who saved Rohan, it was his sister's son who led the army that defended its borders.

But Théoden had strength enough for this, strength enough to ride out of the keep and attack the orcs, strength enough to look up and be grateful and be proud of the man he'd raised from a young boy to a leader of the army.

**#18: Dreams**

For the first week after Éomer rode to his first battle, Théodred missed his best friend desperately. For the second, he had dreams. Dreams of his cousin dying under a spear, an arrow, falling off a horse, a cliff, a ship, drowning in a river, a lake…dream after dream that ended with Éomer, dead and gone.

Théodred would wake up, looking for comfort, looking to make sure that his favorite person on this Earth was still alive…and he'd look at an empty room.

**#19: Reality**

Éomer hugged his sister tightly when he returned from his first campaign. After five minutes of embraces and exclamations he held her at arm's length. "Where's Théodred?"

Éowyn leaned close to him, told him how Théodred had closed himself off to everyone because he was completely, awfully sure that Éomer had died on the fields of battle. As soon as he heard this, the new captain took the steps up to the Hall two at a time. He burst in the door to his cousin's living chamber and found him looking moodily out the window, sword in hand.

He turned, spotting Éomer at once. For a second, it was as if he couldn't believe his own eyes. "You came back."

Éomer rolled his eyes and scooped his friend into a bone-crushing hug. "Do you have so little faith in me, cousin?"

**#20: Baby**

"You're carrying a baby?" Éomer asked, not for the first time. The woman he'd taken to his bed two months ago, the woman who he'd grown to love in those intervening months, looked up at him and nodded, her hand playing over her still flat stomach. She looked frightened at the prospect of Eomer's reaction.

He lifted her off her feet and kissed her, hard, before putting her down very, very carefully, stunned, "we're having a baby."

**#21: Loss**

It was what sent him out to the fields of battle for good, what made it impossible for Éomer to be entirely comfortable at Edoras. Théodred didn't understand, couldn't understand why the halls and hills suddenly reminded his best friend of a woman who died with a child still stuck in her belly.

**#22: Greatness**

He'd heard the words since he was little, but it was only when Éomer was old, seventeen, when he was being knighted, that he actually began to believe that perhaps he was destined to be great.

**#23: Poison**

"Cousin!" Théodred knelt next to his impulsive cousin as he lay convulsing on the floor. Éomer had run into the room and snatched Theodred's cup out of his hand, downing it in a single gulp.

Now Théodred was kneeling anxiously over his best friend, elbowing Éowyn out of the way. "Why would you do that? You are so impulsive." Tears dripped down his nose, onto Eomer's blue lips, as he watched his friend slip away.

**#24: Worth**

"Théodred."

"Éomer."

"I thought I was dead."

"You very nearly were. That poison would have killed you had Gandalf Greyhame not been admiring Shadowfax again."

"It would have killed you, too."

"Ah, cousin. I can take care of myself." Théodred debated for a moment, then placed a kiss on his best friend's sweaty brow. "But thank you for your over-bearing protection, you reckless mongrel."

"Love you too, Théodred."

**#25: Cloak**

Espionage was not in King Theoden's lengthy repertoire of skills, so sneaking the new, glistening, deadly sword into Eomer's quarters while the teenager slept was a daunting task. It was worth it, though, to see his nephew's face in the morning, so surprised, so pleased, so proud.

**#26: Dagger**

Éomer was sure that his heart had stopped working when Théodred died. His cousin was gone, his best friend was gone. The world had turned grey, and he was going through the motions, launching himself into battle with the faint hope that one would kill him before long.

Of course, his heart would choose this time to restart, on the plains in front of Gondor, looking at his sister's body and realizing he still had much to lose.

**#27: Discipline**

King Théoden shook his head as he watched Éomer go limping out of the Golden Hall, head still high though it was sporting a black eye and broken lip. The teen, old enough to know better, had flown into a rage when one of the soldiers he'd been training had suggested that Prince Théodred, sixteen and away on his first campaign, was too weak to make it through alive.

Éomer had protected his son's honor, had managed to teach the soldier a lesson with three swift hits, and had only sustained minor injuries for his pains. Théoden had temporarily stripped him of his command.

The King no longer had any idea what he was going to do about those proud, loyal boys he had raised.

**#28: Gift**

"It's not much." Théodred leaned against the pillar, looking at Éowyn anxiously. For months the young girl had flitted around Edoras, barely speaking, always watching with huge, sad eyes. And Théodred just wanted to see the girl smile, just once.

He was rewarded with a laugh, a hug, a profusion of 'thank yous' that poured out of this reticent young girl as she extracted the puppy from its box and hugged him to her chest, tears dripping into the beautiful fur.

**#29: Names**

"You have to name him, Éowyn, you've kept him for over a month." Éomer rubbed small circles behind the puppy's ear. Since Théodred had given Éowyn the gift, the dog hadn't left her side. And yet she hadn't given him a name.

"But he does have a name!" Éowyn said, startled by the accusation. "It's Théodred!"

Eomer's laugh was long and deep. He didn't know that the dog Théodred would outlive its namesake.

**#30: Obsession**

"Her eyes! Oh, Éomer, I could stare at them all day. And the way her braids fly when she is standing in the wind -"

"You should do something with this lady, Théodred, if you can talk about her for an hour without stopping."

"But I have ridden her all day, cousin, and I plan to do the same tomorrow!"

Éomer sputtered, choked on the water he'd just put in his mouth. _But Théodred is but thirteen! _

Then, after his face had turned red at the thought, his expression cleared, became exasperated. "Is Heppa a horse, Théodred?"

"Of course!" The teen replied, startled at the question. "You didn't think I was talking about a woman?"

**#31: Grief**

Éomer met her on the hill. Neither had talked about visiting their parents' grave on the anniversary of their death, yet fifteen years later here they were, on the side of the same hill, with the same flowers in their hands and the same sadness in their hearts. Whoever said that time healed all wounds had not experienced heartbreak as a child.

**#32: Heartache**

It was the only time they came to blows, when Éomer walked into the courtyard to find his sister and Théodred kissing amongst the flowers. Théodred nursed the black eye for weeks and stopped his short-lived courtship of Éowyn, but he loved her until the day he died.

**#33: Hypothermia**

They were crossing the great mountains, looking for Gondor or possibly elves. It was three weeks before they had to report to the army, to their real duties. They thought they'd have fun.

A steep slope, a deep pool, and fun suddenly turned deadly. Théodred didn't know what to do with Éomer shivering in his arms, with the sun sinking into the mountains, with all hope fading.

**#34: Fun**

They even included Éowyn in this one, which the boys thought mighty big of them. They went off to a stream, one of the few in the barren world of mountains and sand that was Rohan, and played for the whole day. They weren't a prince, twenty and training to assume the throne, or a general, twenty-two with a whole army under him, or an advisor who ran the whole of the Golden Hall on a daily basis.

For one glorious afternoon, they were friends having fun and keeping cool in the summer heat. And they were laughing.

**#35: Games**

Éomer gravitated towards the elf in battle because, even among carnage and bloodshed, his laugh was high and clear and his shout loud and bold. Everything about Legolas exuded a quiet confidence that Éomer had not felt within himself since Théodred…

With Legolas, life was fun again. With Legolas, everything was a game.

**#36: Losing**

Théodred searched the room for the familiar face of Éomer. Hadn't they promised each other, years and years and years ago, when the world was young and beautiful and alive, that they would be at each other's sides, should death take them? They promised that the other would not have to walk that final path alone.

Typical, Théodred thought as he succumbed to that last great blow, that the one promise Éomer ever broke was the one that mattered the most.

**#37: Comfort**

It was refreshing, this search. Yes, morbid in its meaning, looking for a dwarf with an elf (the two were apparently friends, though Éomer couldn't for the life of him figure out why) among the bodies of the fallen at Helm's Deep. And Legolas, crying, looking like an angel in his grief so that Éomer forgot his own loss for the first time since Théodred had died, put away his own grief to help this other man from losing his best friend. Because, Éomer knew quite well, that no one should have to experience that kind of pain.

**#38: Wedding**

He didn't have a father or a king to perform the ceremony. He didn't have a best friend to wait at the end of the aisle. Or so he thought.

Strange, how friends appear as if from nowhere. On the same day Éomer formally announced his engagement, Aragorn insisted on having the ceremony under the White Tree, a symbol of the allience between their kingdoms. And a dozen men from among his ranks all offered to take on the role of best man.

Éomer left that role unfilled, though, because he knew that Théodred would have liked nothing better than to be at his wedding.

**#39: Another Wedding**

Éomer straightened his sister's veil before slipping his arm into hers. "You look beautiful," he declared, happy that she had chosen _this_ man. Faramir was honorable, brave, strong, true, and would be Steward of Gondor but for Aragorn. All laudable qualities in Eomer's eyes.

And he was head-over-heels, over-the-moon in love with his baby sister, and the only man Éomer would ever allow to take her from him.

**#40: An Almost-Wedding**

Theodred was nine when he tried to marry Eowyn for the first time. He gave her a ring of daisies and she wore her best dress and they would have gone through with it, too, if Eomer hadn't come up to them, asking why they weren't in the hall for supper yet.

The wedding was postponed for beef stew, and they never really got around to having it after that.

**#41: Reception**

Éomer didn't know how Rohan would take to him. After all, he'd never been groomed for the King's position (that had been Theodred's job, and Éomer was all for letting him have it). But when he returned to the home of the horeselords, with the tired but proud army beside him, he was greeted as an old friend, as a leader, as a king.

And Éomer thought he could get used to it.

**#42: If Only**

If only that arrow hadn't pierced so deep and Théodred had lived through the battle…if only he could defend Éomer when Théoden ordered him out of the kingdom…if only he'd been there at Helm's Deep, during the carnage and blood and thrill of battle…if only he'd gotten to meet Aragorn, the bravest, noblest man Éomer had ever known…if only he'd gotten to see Legolas and Gimli, fighting like warriors and bickering like a married couple…if only he'd gotten to see the downfall of the lord of the rings and the return of the rightful king…if only Théodred had lived to see everything put to right…

Well, the world would be a much better place.

**#43: Observance**

Théoden had always wished for a brother for his son. Brotherhood went beyond bonds of friendship and loyalty and love. It was truly bone-deep, soul deep. And now he watched his son playing with this boy, watched as the two rubbed against each other, sharpened each other's edges, smoothed them down, played and laughed and fought and grew and learned how to make their way in the world, with the knowledge that they would always have each other.

**#44: Calling**

Éomer did as the king bid and called his sister from that dark place, but as he did he couldn't help but wonder, if he were in her position, Théodred and father dead and gone, would he want her to call him back from the bliss of the unknowing world?

**#45: Slip**

She went crashing into the opposite door, legs spread in a parody of a split, and landed head-first into the bathwater. Wet and sputtering, she looked up to find Théodred and Éomer laughing at her distress. "Karma, sister!" They both cried, hands circling around each other's waists.

Éowyn never tattled on the boys again.

**#46: Darkest Before**

A young boy, barely old enough to be a Rider, spoke of hope the moment before they surged down the mountain with the dawn, trampling into Helm's Deep.

"Hope," Éomer said bitterly. "I've learned to live without it."

**#47: Knowledge**

He knew the hobbit Pippin for a fleeting instant before he was spirited away by Mithrandir, but in those few snippets of conversation he came to know a spirit that was so alive, so _vital_, that not even the knowledge of his friends (and, indeed, all of Middle Earth) facing certain doom didn't belay his cheerful demeanor.

And, as the hobbit was put on a high horse and ridden to Rohan, Éomer spared a moment to acknowledge the fact that, perhaps, Halflings and their backward ways may have a thing or two right after all.

**#48: Gifts**

For king Théoden it was a whistle carved out of ivory and polished until it shone, a whistle so low and mournful that every horse nearby pricked up its ears, were called by his desolate cry.

For her brother, a picture of their parents, drawn painstakingly from memory and painted with great patience. It was the most precious thing she could give.

For Théodred, Théodred, who may just be the love of her life, though she wasn't old enough to know it yet, she gave her heart, a smooth pink stone she'd found on the river bank. With a chain threaded through it, it became Theodred's good luck charm for the rest of his days.

And Éowyn was content, because she'd brought happiness to all the boys that she loved.

**#49: Hate**

Eomer hated people sometimes, because in the middle of war, when you knew that people were going to die any minute and it may just be a kid, may just be a baby, may just be you, hate was just easier than love.

**#50: Love**

_Love: (n) 1. A profoundly tender feeling for another person_

_2. That time, right before Éomer and Théodred rode off to war together, right before Wormtongue corrupted the king, right before everything got so damn difficult, when they were all together in the Golden Hall, and Éowyn was laughing and looking ten years younger, and Éomer and Théodred were singing, and Théoden was smiling, because how could evil things ever happen when there was so much good in the world?_

_3. Love can be for a country, a sister, a surrogate father, a best friend, a brother, a captain, a king._

_4. Family._

**There is almost nothing to go on about Rohan so, yeah, we made 98% of it up.**

**As always, pick a couple of your favorites and we'll tally them up and write a one-shot. **


	14. Interlude VII

**_#32: Heartache_**

_It was the only time they came to blows, when Éomer walked into the courtyard to find his sister and Théodred kissing amongst the flowers. Théodred nursed the black eye for weeks and stopped his short-lived courtship of Éowyn, but he loved her until the day he died._

.***.

Éomer could tell Théodred anything. Anything at all.

They had been best friends before the King adopted Éomer as his son. Best friends that came from something other than shared blood. Like the little hobbits Éomer met years and years later, "cousins" didn't begin to describe their relationship.

Éomer could tell Théodred anything at all. He told him about the creeping suspicion he had that he wasn't infallible, the fear he felt whenever he led men into battle ("I don't fear for myself, Théodred, but I could never, never forgive myself if someone got killed on my account.") He even told his cousin about the affection he felt for a certain maid in one of the outer village, a young woman without the benefit of noble birth but strong in body and mind and beautiful in face.

And Éomer had been sure, absolutely sure, that this was a two-way street, that Théodred told Éomer just as much as Éomer told him. After all, hadn't Théodred expressed similar worries that he was not cut out for the King's position, the position Théoden had been grooming him for his entire life? Hadn't Éomer been the first one Théodred ran to when his second-favorite playmate, a boy their age known as Cleon died of fever?

They were joined at the hip, at the head, at the heart, with similar mannerisms and emotions and ideas. Éomer knew what Théodred was thinking. Always. Which is why he was totally blindsided the day he walked in on him kissing his sister.

He was twenty-one at the time, tall and strong, already a captain and moving swiftly up the ranks in the military because of his good aim and great strategic mind. All day he'd been out on the practice fields, sparring and riding and training men older than he in the art of war.

All day he'd been looking forward to going back to the home on the top of the mountain, looking forward to getting out of the wind and the driving rain and sitting someplace warm and dry. He and Théodred had a long-standing tradition of getting drunk by the fire on days like these, and it was only the thought of a warm drink and dry shoes and good company that kept Éomer out in the weather for ten hours.

He stumbled his way up to the house, tired and wet and sore but happy nonetheless. This army he was training was going to be completely his own, with men that he'd taught, men that trusted him and would, Éomer was sure, follow him anywhere.

There had been one particular young man three years younger than Éomer (so just about Theodore's age then, but Éomer wouldn't think about that. He couldn't think about Théodred going to war. His friend was so _young_) who had looked up at Éomer after he'd successfully pulled off a block with his shield and swing with his sword that he'd been trying to get all day. It was this boy who had put his wet hand to Éomer's wet face and informed his captain that he was bleeding rather badly. "We should all leave, sir, this weather is only going to hurt us now."

And Éomer had agreed, and dragging himself up to the Golden Hall was quickly becoming the best part of his day so far. A warm fire and warm clothes and warm food was all he needed…

He was so close to the baths that he almost didn't look in the courtyard when he passed by the door, but sometimes the younger servants went out there to pick vegetables from the garden and couldn't push the heavy door open again. A few years ago, a young boy had been trapped out there all night before anyone noticed, and luckily it had been Spring….today it was raining, and cold, and Éomer forced his sore arms to do this one last task before the reprieve of the bath.

The driving rain almost (almost) blocked the view of Théodred and Éowyn, but Éomer could just make them out. And when he processed what he was seeing – his _best friend_ kissing his _sister?_ – he forgot his fatigue and his dripping clothes and the cut across his forehead that was leaking blood into his eyes and he roared, "What are you _doing_?"

Théodred and Éowyn jumped apart as Éomer barreled across the courtyard to them, shaking his head uselessly as more raindrops pelted him. He was already wet, anyway. "I can't believe you!" Éomer said, inserting himself between Théodred and Éowyn and yelling in the younger man's face. "I leave you alone with my sister – who is your sister by law, Théodred, do not forget – and you…you take _advantage_ of her?"

"No one is taking advantage of me, brother!" Éowyn retorted from behind him, but Éomer quieted her with one death glare before turning back to Théodred.

"You are the man I trust most in this world." Éomer said, voice controlled now, a deadly calm. "You are the man I would die for, and you take advantage of this relationship to hurt my family?"

"'Mer, you're bleeding." Théodred said, eyes wide with concern as he went up to touch Éomer's face just as the boy on the practice field had done not an hour before. "You should see the Healer. It is a deep cut, friend."

"Friend?" Éomer raged, "You call me friend after this…this sort of frivolities with my sister? I know you, Théodred, do not forget that. If I didn't know you this would not be a discussion. My sister is old enough to make her own decisions." From behind him, Éowyn made a small noise, affirming that she _was_ old enough. "But you are not one for serious relationships, and I will not have my sister's heart broken in some fling with a boy we both care about!"

He was thinking worst-case scenario. As a captain, he was _always _thinking worse-case scenario. What if this was more than a kiss in the courtyard? What if this was a relationship, one that turned ugly? All was fair in love and war, after all, and lines would be drawn, sides taken, and could Éomer lose both his sister and best friend in one fell swoop, one failed affair? He didn't think so, but there was the possibility, the terrible possibility, that he would have to choose between Éowyn and Théodred. And he just couldn't do that.

"This is not a fling, Éomer!" Théodred said, raising his voice for the first time. He pushed back his drenched hair and scrubbed his face with his wet hand, making sure, making absolutely sure, that he could see Éomer when he said what he needed to say. "This is not us playing at being young lovers. I love her!"

The punch came from the frustration Éomer felt that that moment, the frustration at not being able to put his fears into words, the frustration of the prospect of having to chose, the frustration of still being wet and cold and sore and having this conversation when all he wanted to do right now was have a warm bath.

Théodred reeled with the force of it, but stood up quickly afterwards, one hand to his rapidly swelling cheek, the other out in a motion of truce. "Éomer…" He said, mind racing, eyes flying over Éomer's crazed eyes and stumbling stature and that gaping hole on his head, bleeding freely down his face. He needed a Healer and he needed rest and they were all wet and cold.

So he said something that he didn't want to say. "I will make no further advances on your sister, Éomer, and I extend an apology to you for my misconduct." He said it formally, tiredly, and half-glanced over at Éowyn, irate and fuming behind her brother. She didn't say anything, though. She, too, saw what Éomer and Théodred saw. This relationship, if it didn't last until marriage, would only lead to division and woe.

Éomer looked Théodred up and down and nodded curtly, wobbling some more on the spot until Éowyn put a helpful arm around his shoulders and led him out of the courtyard, leaving Théodred to stand there, alone with a throbbing cheekbone, to muse about how sometimes nobody got what they wanted.

**.***.**

**We love writing about Rohan. We get to make most of it up.**

**Anyways, have a Happy New Year, everyone!**


	15. Gandalf

**Gandalf**

_**Frodo:** I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.  
**Gandalf:** So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us._

**#1: Names**

He had so many that it was hard to remember them all. Gandalf, of course, the Grey, the White, Stormcrow, and Greyhame. The Grey Pilgrim. The Grey Wanderer. The White Rider. Lathspell. Tharkun. Olorin. Mithrandir. Every place he went he had a new name, shed and forgotten when he left, remembered with a smile when he returned.

**#2: Frodo**

Gandalf had met every one of his eight companions before they set off on the journey of the Ring. He'd met Frodo just after the death of his parents, right after the child had moved in with eccentric, unaging Bilbo at Bag End.

"Mr. Gandalf?" The small hobbit-voice had broken the stillness of the summer morning and Gandalf looked up, displacing his pipe from between his teeth. He smiled warmly at the young, serious, sad-looking hobbit at his feet.

"Just Gandalf, young one. I believe you are Frodo Baggins?"

"Yes, sir." Frodo wavered for a moment, debating whether or not to continue, then flew into the question he'd pondered a hundred times over. "Mis – Gandalf…is there a place on Middle Earth where I could see my parents again?" The words were rushed, stumbling over each other in their haste to get out. "Because Uncle Bilbo has been so many places…there must be a place like that, right?"

Gandalf smiled, and this time his, too, was sad, as he drew the young hobbit close to him and attempted to explain death in terms that a grieving, lost child could possibly understand.

**#3: Attachments**

Wizards do not get close, not to each other or to the people of the earth. They generally take no spouses and father no children. They are the enigmas of Middle Earth, they are old, and they are a dying breed.

But somehow, it was those hobbits. Their culture and small lives, their worries and hopes and fears. Their pipe weed and dancing and parties. It was the simplicity of the people that enticed him and kept him revisiting the Shire all those long years.

**#4: Journey**

He took two journeys of note: the one where he'd met Bilbo and the one where he saved Middle Earth. In his mind, the second couldn't have existed without the first, and for many years Gandalf would lie awake and wonder: if he hadn't pushed Thorin and Balan and the other dwarves on the journey, would the world have ever been in peril? Would the Ring have resurfaced? Could all that death have been avoided?

The question would plague him until the end.

**#5: Traveler**

He was a man of the world, traveling in a year from Weathertop to the Misty Mountains, from Isengard to Rohan, staying in each place for a night or a month, returning to the lands of elves to converse with those who had seen as much of the world as he. Yes, he was a traveler of lands, of people. He traveled light and often, walking or riding. And he loved every minute of it.

**#6: Death**

First it was fiery, like the Balrog, like the crack in the earth that was Khazad-Dum. Then it was as cold as steel, or the depths of winter when even the sun daren't shine for too long. And through the haze of blinding elements, Gandalf found himself praying that a certain small hobbit with a Ring as large as the world had made it out of the caves alive.

**#7: Age**

He didn't know how long he had walked the earth. Perhaps a hundred years, or a hundred hundred. He had seen the struggles between good and evil, the lure of temptation, the desire for righteousness that existed in all races and people. He'd lived long. Perhaps too long.

**#8: White Shores**

He meant what he said to the youngest hobbit. Death: he'd been there, done that. "White shores…and beyond. A far green country under a swift sunrise."

And the response of the soldier, no more than a young boy, had just about broken the heart of an old, decrepit wizard. "Well," said Pippin, clutching his sword tightly and smiling thinly around his cringe at the sounds of battle, "That isn't too bad."

"No," Gandalf agreed, returning the smile, "No, it's not."

**#9: Pippin**

Perhaps everyone had a soft spot in them for the youngest hobbit, the Fool of a Took who so nearly cost the Fellowship everything. He was the youngest on the journey, with the sweet, lilting voice of a child with the songs of a dove.

Gandalf's first encounter with the child repeated itself throughout the years. From the beginning he'd been a troublemaker, causing mayhem with his every action, especially at parties. Gandalf will remember until his dying day the expression on the hobbit's face after they let off the dragon firework early.

But the fact was that, despite his blustering and growling at little Pippin, Gandalf could not be prouder of the man the child had grown to be.

**#10: Lessons**

Letting a smile come to his lips, the old wizard pushed the elf off of him. "Now, Legolas, do you really think that necessary?"

The serious blue eyes of a very young elf (in elvish terms) stared back at him. "Mithrandir, you must have known you were walking into an orcish trap."

"Ah, Princeling, but did _you_ know?" And for years afterward, Gandalf was able to pass his lapse of attention off as a training exercise.

**#11: Fever**

It was a young boy who brought him to the city of Gondor for the first time in…oh, half a century at least. He'd been spending his time comfortably in the elf kingdoms, learning, studying, practicing; but when a foot soldier begged him to come to the king's city in order to help the Steward's youngest son, how could Gandalf refuse?

Of course, it was that very visit that may have been his undoing, for it forced him to realize that the next great war was closer than any prophesy fortold.

**#12: Boromir**

Gandalf first saw Boromir when he was treating his younger brother for an abnormally high fever. Boromir would not leave the room, had not left it, apparently, for three days. "Oh, child, your brother will be fine."

"I know." Boromir yawned, crouching against the wall. "I wanted to stay here….just in case."

Gandalf had already had his suspicions about the kind of man the current Steward was – greedy and occasionally cruel – and yet he found himself smiling when he left the Houses of Healing because both young boys in there were fighters. It would be them, he was sure, and their bond, that would bring the world to its knees.

**#13: Unlucky**

He rarely thought of luck in terms of whether or not he possessed it. Men, elves, dwarves, hobbits, wizards – they all made their own luck in this world. It was only when he was stranded on top of the tower of a man he used to consider a friend – a good friend – did Gandalf begin to question if the line of circumstances leading up to that had been just a series of bad luck.

**#14: Sleep**

Bending over the hobbit nestled between him and Shadowfax's majestic head, Gandalf envied Pippin of his easy sleep, as if he hadn't just stared at the face of evil, as if they weren't riding into war. As if nothing was the matter at all.

**#15: Injury**

It was he who stayed by Frodo's bedside. He who sent away the steadfast Sam in hopes that the younger hobbit might find sleep. It was he who re-bandaged wounds and checked for fever and who – he could admit it now, so many years after the fact – prayed to a God he didn't really believe in to help Frodo, small and frail on the great Rivendell bed.

Because the facts boiled down to this: if Gandalf had been on time, Frodo never would have been hurt. If he'd been on time, they could have all been saved.

**#16: Being**

There are different theories to how wizards came about. In much later years, Gandalf would read up on these hypotheses and chuckle. Some said that a wizard was a man born backwards in time, others that they were the offspring of some crude, Titan-like beast, not so much unlike the immortal Gods of Rohan and Gondor.

Gandalf didn't remember how he came into the world. When the question was asked of him, he merely stared at the questioner, asking them right back if they could clearly recall the first years after their birth.

**#17: Birthdays**

He was old, so very old, and it was only when he was attending a birthday party – usually in the Shire, among the pleasant, simple Little People – that he looked back on his long, long years, and make his own privet wish on a birthday cake he'd never received.

**#18: Wishes**

Perhaps it was presumptuous or unimaginative of him to always wish for the same thing, but he did anyway. Gandalf would wish, in his own privet thoughts, that the world as he knew it would never experience major upheaval, that the various peoples could go about their various lives without them being interrupted by strife. And he could think of no greater wish to ask for.

**#19: Camping**

Somehow, being outdoors, on the run, on a Quest, was better with the Fellowship. Gimli spun new tales on the stars for the enthralled hobbits, and Legolas and Sam together made an excellent supper that tasted all the better after smelling it simmering all night. In good time, there were stories and songs and laughter.

And Gandalf speculated on how much he missed camaraderie after all those years of traveling alone.

**#20: Regrets**

There were a couple of regrets he had in his lifetime, mostly from when he was young and still thought that, single-handedly, he could fix a universe that always played team games. But the thing he regretted most was leaving (some would say dying, but still, leaving) Frodo all alone to try to pick up the pieces of a world that was too broken for any conjurer to put back together.

**#21: Recognition**

In the end, it had taken more out of him than he realized, traipsing all over Middle Earth and fighting battles along the way. He was more than happy to stay in the background and watch as the other surviving members of the Fellowship got their just rewards. When he saw the world bow to the hobbits, he let out a smile, because it was the mark of a good teacher to be surpassed by his students.

And Gandalf thought that he might just have been surpassed by seven of them at once.

**#22: Rules**

There were laws of Man and then there were laws of the Earth, which were different rules entirely. Though Gandalf spent his life studying the rules of Mother Nature, he didn't think he, or anyone, would be able to understand Her completely.

**#23: Sam**

"Gandalf?" The quiet, sleepy voice of a very young hobbit echoed in the cavernous rooms of the Houses of Healing. "Is Sam going to be alright?"

Gandalf looked down at the prone body of Samwise Gamgee, just back from Mordor and badly hurt. Burns covered his torso and blackened one of his arms, and a fever racked his too-thin body. Gandalf set Pippin on his lap, so the hobbit could see over the lip of the high bed. "He is in danger, my very young Took, and perhaps his body won't be able to handle the fever," he didn't want to be saying these words, but giving Pippin false hope would be worse, "But he has done his job," he smiled, pressed a cooling hand to a hot hobbit forehead, "And he has made me very proud."

**#24: Dirty**

There was nothing, nothing, that was better than plunging one's head into a bucket or basin or stream of cool water after a day of riding or a night of battle, and there was nothing Gandalf liked more than watching his companions smile as they became clean as if by magic in a place where there was very little to smile about at all.

**#25: Friendly Fire**

He would never forget the look on the elf's face, pushing and twisting off the ground so that he could look into the face of his attacker just before he died. "Mithrandir?"

And that's when Gandalf knew he was getting too old for this life.

**#26: Lost**

The search took an hour that stretched into a day, then a month. "Estel…" He knew better than anyone, with the possible exception of the man-child's adoptive father Elrond, how very important this broken teenager was. "My dear Estel, you have done all you can for your friend."

But the listless boy wouldn't even look at him. He sat, perched on one of the balconies of Rivendell, staring out into the forest, holding onto the hope that his _mellon_ would come home unharmed. How was an old man to explain loss and death to a boy who should know nothing of such horrors? "There are white shores…" he began, clinging to this last hope that if the young prince of Mirkwood was no longer being taken care of in this world, perhaps he was thriving in the next.

**#27: Found**

A small, damp weight and a dimpled smile greeted Gandalf in the Shire. "Don't you like hide n' seek?" Then, the voice dropping conspiratorially, a very young Sam added, "Please play with us, Mr. Gandalf, we're trying to make Frodo play again."

_Make him play again_. It was a noble wish from the young friend, who didn't understand why Frodo hadn't said a single word in the week since his parent's deaths. And what else could a child do? "Please play…"

And Gandalf found himself answering, bizarrely, "It would be my pleasure."

**#28: Gimli**

The first time Gandalf met Gimli was three or four years before the meeting of the Fellowship. He had known Gloin once, of course, had even, at that time, been renowned as one of the foremost scholars on the elusive, occasionally archaic dwarf culture. Most of his knowledge came from Gloin, the easy-going right hand of Thorin, the story teller, the soldier.

When he died, Gandalf took it upon himself to see how the once-thriving dwarves were fairing. Not well. The mines were going, or gone, dried up or, more likely, overrun. There was fight left in the dwarves, but only just, mostly originating from the young dwarf who had stepped up to be leader of his clan.

Gandalf knew that if there ever came a time for the dwarves to take up arms to defend their way of life, Gimli would be in the front of the charge.

**#29: Grace**

Gandalf dared only a single backwards look at the carnage. "There but for the Grace of God go I." It was a phrase he'd often heard, something distant, a memory, a dream, words that held little meaning and yet more possibility than he could conceive.

**#30: White Shores**

Not all shores had to represent death. Once, when Gandalf was younger (he was never just _young_, not in his memory) he had foolishly volunteered to play chaperone to elfin children, too young to leave their homes by themselves and too old to be content to stay in the forest. One elf-child (a child who grew to be Legolas, but that was a different story) with serious eyes asked him if these were the white shores he spoke of when comforting about death.

Gandalf replied that he hoped so, because he'd never been anywhere so beautiful in his life.

**#31: Hero**

Gandalf had been called a hero many times in his life. He's saved children, families, villages. He's been the turning point in a losing battle, the commander in many victories. But at that moment, he felt that the only person in the world who deserved to be called a hero was Sam, kneeling by Frodo's bed after walking across the continent on nothing but the faith that a wizard and his Mister Frodo were always right.

**#32: News**

It wasn't often that he would meet someone from the Shire on his travels across Middle Earth, but every time he did he would sit down and listen to stories of parties and weddings and harvests, news that meant, if nothing else, that a race of people could live entirely free of strife.

**#33: Aragorn**

"The boy needs a tutor."

This would be the last time Gandalf ever did a favor for an old friend. Now he was left in a room with a man-child who thought he was an elf, a descendant of Isildur who knew next to nothing about the historic battle at the base of Mount Doom, a young boy who didn't want to learn about history with an old man but enjoy a beautiful day with his elvish family.

**#34: Merry**

The first time Gandalf met Merry, he didn't know quite what to make of the boy.

Laughing smile and mischievous nature were juxtaposed by his extremely protective nature and serious eyes. Gandalf watched, curious, as the hobbits whiled away an afternoon talking and laughing and swapping stories of this or that small going-on. At the end, Gandalf's opinion of the Brandybuck was that he was an interesting young fellow but not anything to take interest in.

It was only later that night, when Gandalf saw Merry fling an arm in front of Frodo so the rabid dog would bite him instead of the older cousin, that the old wizard realized there may be some brave stuff in this young lad after all.

**#35: Games**

Gandalf had almost forgotten how to play them. He played Advisor to dignitaries and commander to armies and historian in the many great libraries of the world, but it had been long, so long, since he'd sat down and played games with children.

It was little Estel and his friend Legolas, the child-Prince of Mirkwood, who reminded him that sometimes the greatest things in life were clean air and cool grass and the sound of high, unashamed laughter echoing through the beautiful woods of the world.

**#35: Old Friends**

When he first learned the language of the Ents, he was young and somewhat foolish and thought he could help. "When did you last see the Ent-Wives?" He asked an Ent that was Treebeard, though back then he went by a different name.

It was then that he learned that friendship could be formed very easily by a common quest. It was then that he learned that time traveled differently in different races, and a week and a lifetime were much the same thing to nearly-immortal beings like the tree and himself. It was then that he learned that everything in his world was relative.

**#36: Packing**

He was so used to traveling light that he had only a few sentimental items with his small pack of absolute necessities. A chain woven around a strap on his bag, made for him by an elfin prince for good look. A precious gem dug from the depths of the earth by a group of grateful dwarves. A woven circle to keep away nightmares from a Gondorian boy in thanks for saving his precious baby brother. A carved pipe from a man child who grew up like an elf, the result of hours of lessons in the word _patience_.

**#37: Safe**

He drew his cloak closer around his shoulder and gratefully accepted another flagon of drink from Butterbur as he gazed out of the windows of the Prancing Pony, glad that he was not out in the storm that raged outside.

**#38: Savior**

Habit, not skill or luck, forced his hand out when he did to push the elf out of the way of the arrow. When Legolas, teenaged now and terribly independent, blustered his way to his feet, he demanded how Gandalf knew the arrow was coming, since his superior elfin perceptions did not notice it whizzing out of the forest.

"There is no substitute for being very, very old, my very, very young pupil." Gandalf said, eye twinkling as he turned around so Legolas could grumble about how being nearly six hundred was not "very young" at all.

**#39: Saved**

It was embarrassing how he'd been disarmed so easily by a passing adversary, left struggling for breath in a ford on the outskirts of Rohan. This was years after the adventure with Bilbo and months before his adventures with the Fellowship, and his quick descent towards the slippery slope of death made him smile at the irony of being beaten by so small a lapse in attention.

A young Théodred, months away from his own death and riding with a scouting party around his kingdom, pulled him from the river and brought him back to Edoras. It was the most important thing the prince would do in his short life.

**#40: Wonderful **

The wonderful thing about wizards is that he may not be the only one, but he was damn close.

And he knew that, sometimes, that wasn't such a wonderful thing.

**#41: Irrational**

Often – too often – Gandalf was thought to be the rational side of every problem. The advisor with the perfect counsel. The one with all the answers.

Looking at the _mithril_ in the horrible Speaker's hands and knowing that he would never see the bright spark of Frodo Baggins again made Gandalf realize definitively that sometimes even wizards were only human.

Sometimes wizards weren't about the feeling of wanting to burn every evil thing to the ground.

**#42: Legolas**

He didn't meet the young Prince until the even younger Estel was on his way to growing up and it became obvious he needed a companion. Elladan and Elrohir were too old to be playmates, and Gandalf had an inkling that using Arwen would be disastorous. So he asked around the other kingdoms and found the youngest son of Thranduil was restless in Mirkwood. Bringing the headstrong elf and stubborn man-child together was like watching mountain collide with mountain, but never before had Gandalf been prouder of his matchmaking skills than when he watched Estel and his _mellon_.

**#43: Tempo**

There is a tempo to the world, a timing, a rhythm, a feel to the whole of the land. Gandalf was attuned to it, knew that a babbling brook and cackling stream meant very different things, that a sighing Southern wind and whispering Eastern gust could predict the coming of wars and births and years. He knew the ways of the world, of nature, and sometimes tapped his great staff along to the tempo, just to remind himself that he was part of this glorious place.

**#44: ****Wander**

For years he just wandered, going where the wind took him, and then the elves claimed him as their own and he listened to their wise words and offered a few stumbling sentences in return that they nodded and laughed and he was accepted into the trees and magic of their world. And then he wandered again, leaving the majestic land behind until he found a smaller people, quieter, slower, and they didn't want wise words but fireworks to light up the night and they loved him for his magic and he found that he wasn't just accepted amongst these tiny hobbits – he belonged.

**#45: Ramble**

He was interested in the dwarves long before he brought Bilbo into the affair with the gold and the dragon, the affair that started that other, longer, bloodier affair of the Ring. He loved the dwarves for the simple fact that they did not love him, did not want him, and did not need him. And sometimes it was nice to see such stubborn independence in such small folk.

**#46: Question**

"Are we almost there, Gandalf?"

Gandalf the Grey smiled behind his snow-covered beard and picked up the tiny Took, the one who had been trudging through snow-drifts twice his size all day, the one so tired he kept rubbing his eyes with his tiny, frozen fists.

He scooped the hobbit into his large, dry cloak and felt Pippin shiver against him. "We're very close now." Gandalf said, because sometimes certain things needed to be said when Rivendell was only a week behind them and there was an entire country of horrors to traverse.

**#47: Relief**

When Aragorn told him that Frodo had not gone to Mordor alone, as Gandalf had feared, but his faithful servant had also followed him into those forsaken lands…relief is not even the word. For Gandalf knows that Sam would rather die himself than watch Frodo consumed by the power of the Ring.

**#48: Battle**

So many of his friends had died over the course of his long life (so long he couldn't even quite pinpoint the moment it began) that he used to think that new deaths could not hurt him.

But the visions of battle – Frodo being speared by the troll; Legolas consumed by Uruk'hai in Helm's Deep; Merry, looking pale and still in the Houses of Healing; Pippin's foot peeping out from under the troll; Aragorn's suicide charge towards the legions of Morder – were still enough to make his breath hitch and his heart clench, still enough to remind him that life could be loved and lost in an instant.

**#49: Death**

When he'd died, he just wanted to die. Wanted it to end. He'd lived past all his old, old friends, had lived past his time. There was nothing, nothing he could do for a world in so much turmoil.

He thought of the Ring and still wanted to die. Thought of Sauron and Sarumon and still wanted to die.

He thought of the Fellowship and decided that life might have something left after all.

**#50: Love**

The coronation, with everyone alive and happy and whole and _alive_. That was when Gandalf looked up to catch Aragorn's eye (the King had his hand intertwined with an elfin Princess's) and Legolas gave him a small nod, and Gimli made a gesture with his hand, a fist pump for success, and the little hobbits were smiling so proudly…well, that was when Gandalf knew it was all over. They'd won the battle for Middle Earth, and an old wizard had fallen hopelessly in love with the young charges that comprised the Fellowship of the Ring.

**So there's old Gandalf for you, from your two loveable Gandalfs over here. Any ones you particularly liked, just drop us a line and we'll write a one-shot next. **


	16. Interlude VIII

**_#26: Lost_**

_The search took an hour that stretched into a day, then a month. "Estel…" He knew better than anyone, with the possible exception of the man-child's adoptive father Elrond, how very important this broken teenager was. "My dear Estel, you have done all you can for your friend."_

_But the listless boy wouldn't even look at him. He sat, perched on one of the balconies of Rivendell, staring out into the forest, holding onto the hope that his mellon would come home unharmed. How was an old man to explain loss and death to a boy who should know nothing of such horrors? "There are white shores…" he began, clinging to this last hope that if the young prince of Mirkwood was no longer being taken care of in this world, perhaps he was thriving in the next._

**.***.**

One of Legolas's brothers had ridden hard through the night to find Gandalf just crossing over the mountains towards Rivendell. "Mithrandir!" The brother had called, leaping nimbly from his horse so he could deliver the message with both feet on the ground. "You must tell Lord Elrond…"

Gandalf's face became like stone as he listened to the news. The young man-child raised under Elrond's care, the one who only a select few knew was Isildur's heir, had gone missing, along with the youngest of King Thranduril's sons, the laughing, golden boy who was doted upon by his older brothers. "Can they have merely become distracted by some fancy in the woods? Legolas and Estel are both very young. Losing track of time is not unheard of, especially for an elf surrounded by such beauty as the majesty of Mirkwood."

"Of course," The brother had replied, delicate eyebrows coming together in concern on his high, unblemished forehead. "But Legolas is known for being very punctual, and our father is afraid that perhaps the orcs that have been raiding the outskirts of Mirkwood have become bolder than previous years…"

"Orcs?" Orcs were a different matter altogether. Brutish, and without even the tenuous loyalty of goblins, they stole whatever they wanted, and especially liked to wreak havoc on the pristine lands of the elves.

Of course elves, despite their outward appearance of being less hardy than dwarves or even the flimsy creatures of man, were a race made powerful by war. Though they were too dignified to attack a race unprovoked, even one as despicable as the orcs, they fought like savages if someone else threatened their precious trees and fields with fire and axes.

"So you're afraid that Legolas and Estel wandered into the path of the orcs? And what are you doing about that?" Legolas was the Prince of Mirkwood, albeit seventh in line for the throne. Estel, if his future is everything Gandalf foresees for him, will be King. And everything prophesied in the olden days point to the fact that these two and the bond they share will bring the world to its knees.

But they have to live long enough for that to happen.

"My brothers have taken a full fifth of the army of Mirkwood to scour the woods where they were last seen. Legolas and the man-child were on the path back to Rivendell when they disappeared."

At his words, Gandalf felt his bones itching to tear back through the woods. He had an unusual liking for Estel, for the young man was quick and smart and had fire in his blood that was so unlike the quiet, sedate manners of the elves he'd grown up with. But he knew that his place was somewhere else.

"Keep me informed." He told this older brother. "I will be in Rivendell." He steered his horse (not Shadowfax, but a worthy counterpart) in the direction of the elvish home in the mountains, never letting himself look behind, for fear of what his meddling emotions might have him do.

.***.

Lord Elrond was understandably frantic when word of his ward's disappearance reached him. Though the elves of Mirkwood, Rivendell, and Lothlorian had lived in peace for centuries, such a peace can be strained by one infraction. Like an important young man going missing in another King's woods. Elrond sent his twin eldest sons, Elladan and Ellrohir, to search along with the other brothers, instructing them not to return until they found Estel. Dead or alive.

"Orcs." Elrond had mumbled after they left. He was sitting with Gandalf in the open air of Rivendell, staring out over the gardens and rivers and woods that somehow seemed less beautiful than before the news of the boys' disappearances. "Something so…mundane…can unravel the whole future." He never turned, but his voice changed as he addressed Gandalf directly. "Tell me, Wizard, did the prophesies foretell this?"

Gandalf bowed his head low, puffing absently on his pipe. The prophesies, he explained around the object, did not foretell a great many things.

Like the fact that friendship can form in the oddest of places: between a wizard and an elf. Between an elf and a man. Like the fact that, sometimes, the world just doesn't make sense, and even learned people like Gandalf could not pretend to know all the answers. Like the fact that the disappearance of a single man-child could turn the whole history of the world upside down.

.***.

The twins returned a tense three weeks later, Estel riding in front of Elladan. He was very nearly dead.

The combined powers of the elf healers and Gandalf's vast knowledge kept him alive, though he hovered in a half-world of dreams and pain. His hand was always held by Elrond or one of the twins, who gripped it hard when he cried out in pain or kept repeating, over and over again, "Legolas! Legolas! _Mi mellon_!"

"His brain is addled." Ellrohir said grimly one day as he walked with Gandalf around one of the many beautiful gardens in Rivendell. "I understand perfectly."

"What happened to him?" Gandalf asked, the question that had been plaguing him for a week slipping out in frustration.

"The orcs must have known they had captured important people. I think they were trying to work out how to negotiate a trade – Mirkwood and Rivendell land for the return of Legolas and Estel. But the orcs are stupid creatures. Slow-witted. They were…they were torturing Estel and Legolas while their best and brightest figured out the finer points of a hostage situation."

"So you saw Legolas?" Gandalf asked. There had been no formal threat of war from Mirkwood, but the elves that used to pass seamlessly from one kingdom to the next had ceased, and all Mirkwood elves that had been residing in Rivendell went back to their own king. This situation could well result in a bloodbath between two provinces of an immortal and passionate race, and Gandalf did not want to be nearby when war broke out.

"No, but the last coherent thing Estel said before Elladan got him on his horse was that Legolas was nearby…of course, he could have been confused. It's possible they'd already killed Legolas…or, even if they hadn't then, they could have by now." Ellrohir sighed, looking out over the beauty of his world and not seeing the violet blossoms or bubbling brook at all, but instead remembering the agony and despair in his adopted brother's eyes when he realized his best friend was no longer beside him.

Gandalf put a comforting hand on the elf's shoulder. "Take heart. Estel is made of hardy stuff. His mind will not succumb so easily."

"I hope you are right, Mithrandir." Ellrohir murmured, "But I find that the future is not what I once believed it to be. I am confident in nothing." He took a few quick steps forward, the beginning of a run, and the movement was so fluid and beautiful that it caused something to ache dully in Gandalf's old heart. "I'm sorry. I must go."

Gandalf watched the elf run into the woods, dashing between trees, picking his way through underbrush without fault, and knew that he had fled because the tears of elves have been known to move mountains, to cause wars, to bring even the most powerful people on Middle Earth to their knees.

.***.

"Estel…" Gandalf murmured, putting his hand on the teenager's skinny back. Bruises and harsher marks still stretched across the bare skin, and he was careful not to touch these areas. Even a month after his rescue, even with all the powers of the elves and of Gandalf himself, Estel was still in pain. Pain that went beyond his physical wounds.

"Legolas is the strongest being I know." Estel murmured, sitting on the balcony and staring towards the distant mountains that marked the beginning of Mirkwood. "Stronger than _Ada_. Stronger than you, Mithrandir. He is not dead."

Gandalf did not want to think of the laughing young elf that had been flitting around Estel for the last decade, did not want to think of his nimble fingers or dancing feet or quick bow, and once these images were in his mind he could not banish them.

He knew that the last days or weeks of Legolas's life could not have been anything other than a pain-ridden hell, but at least he had his faith that, if the prince was no longer being taken care of in this world, at least he could thrive in the next. Estel had no such belief system, for as far as Gandalf knew, Elrond had never told Estel of the white shores that were the haven, the heaven of the elves.

So he cleared his throat, heart a little lighter for the first time in weeks. He could at least offer this much comfort. "There are white shores," he began gently, fingers gently tracing the network of scars on Estel's back. No child should know of such horrors.

Estel turned to him, eyebrows raised at Gandalf's abrupt halt. His face was a picture of anguish, or heartbreak, and an old wizard found himself praying for the right words.

"The journey doesn't end here." Gandalf began again, not knowing that he'd use these very same words half a century later, to comfort another scared young boy. "Death is just another path…one that we all must take." He tried to convey the majesty of the next world in his words, a world that he believed in with every fiber of his being. "The grey curtain of the world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass. And then you see it."

Estel's eyes were bright with unshed tears, and he didn't wipe them away before he croaked, pleading, "What? What do you see, Mithrandir?"

"White shores…and beyond. A far green country under a swift sunrise."

For the first time in a month, a tiny smile twitched the corners of Estel's lips. "That isn't so bad." He conceded quietly, eyes flitting again to the boundaries of Mirkwood.

"No," Gandalf said, smiling behind his beard, smiling because that is what this very young man needed to see. "No, it isn't."

And on that day, four days before Legolas would wander into Rivendell, bruised and beaten but very much alive, Estel gave up all hope of ever seeing his friend again.

.***.

**We mentioned this incident a couple of times in a couple of different drabbles, and felt we just had to expand on it. **

**Anyways, please review. **


	17. The Fellowship

**The Fellowship**

_**Elrond: **Nine companions. So be it. You shall be the fellowship of the ring.  
**Pippin: **Great. Where are we going?_

**#1: Scars**

It was probably the most fun any of them had had since…well, since before war had broken out. Gimli pointed to an old hunting scar on his arm. Legolas and Aragorn removed their shirts to show almost identical scars from orc-blades. Boromir took off his boot to show a large burn on his foot from when he'd wandered too close to a forge. Even Gandalf got into the spirit of things, revealing a goblin-inflicted sore on the back of his neck.

Pippin had a wound the size of his leg from jumping too suddenly into a brook. Merry had a nasty-looking gash on his stomach from sparring with a cousin in his youth. Sam couldn't remember where half the scars on his hands came from. And Frodo just took off his waistcoat to reveal the Weather Top stab, stretching across his shoulder, marring skin from his forearm to his chest.

No one really won.

**#2: Search and Find**

There wasn't really a question about going after Merry and Pippin. Not really. Something inside the remaining three Fellowship members knew that whatever path Frodo had set himself on, it wasn't for them to follow.

And…and Aragorn had seen the horrors that had befallen those captured by orcs. He'd witnessed them, lived them, as had Legolas. And none of the three could imagine leaving the hobbits, young as they were, pure as they were, in the hands of such ugly monsters.

**#3: Dynamics**

The little alliances within the nine are what made the Fellowship a Fellowship. Legolas and Gimli. Legolas and Aragorn. The hobbits, all four intertwined and yet splitting off into two separate groups: Merry and Pippin, Frodo and Sam. Boromir, grouped, strangely, with the hobbits, a leader, a guide.

Separate but equal. Like an orange, split into sections, each one distinct, individual, each part working to make the full circle.

**#4: Cold**

One night, they were camping on the side of one of the great Misty Mountains and it snowed.

Aragorn was used to shivering his way through the night. No fire, not even one made by a wizard, could start in a blizzard. Strider might have vetoed the idea anyway. Too easy to attract attention. But Aragorn was used to solo nights while camping, watching with envy as his elvish brothers and, later, his elvish best friend withstood the cold wearing just a vest and some soft boots.

But tonight, when he woke from a thin sleep, he found another small something pushing against his arm, wanting to share what little body heat he could offer. Merry had been kicked out of the puppy-like pile of the hobbits and, searching for warmth, had found one of the most lethal men in the world.

What could he do? He lifted his sleeping blanket for a moment and scooped the Halfling nearer until they were locked together. And suddenly it wasn't quite as cold.

**#5: Frozen**

One night, they were camping on the side of one of the great Misty Mountains when they were buried.

The avalanche started suddenly and couldn't be stopped. Sam pressed against Bill the Pony, shoving him nearer to the mountain. He looked around in that split second before the snow hit him for his Frodo but couldn't find him. Instead he found Gimli, pushing him against the frozen crevice in the rock, shielding him from the stones and snow reigning down from above. "Hold on, laddie, this is the fun part!"

**#6: Frigid**

One night, after the avalanche on the side of one of the great Misty Mountains, they lost one of their own.

Pippin was the last and least, the youngest. When they all popped out of the snow, sputtering and stuttering and freezing, there was an automatic headcount. There was Boromir, his arms wrapped around Merry and Frodo, his great shield protecting them all. There was Aragorn and Legolas, the first on top of the snow pile. There was Gimli, pressed against the pony and Sam, looking up at a very snowy Gandalf.

It took a few minutes before they realized that Pippin hadn't gotten up, that Pippin had, in fact, been hit on the head by a rock half the size of his body. It took a few minutes to find him, a hundred yards down in a drift the size of a large house, lips and fingers and eyelids blue but his head where the boulder had struck him an awful, gory red.

**#7: Midgewater**

There were only five of them on that trek across the marshes, but they were still a Fellowship, if a loosely woven, distrustful one.

In fact, that was when they became cemented as a Fellowship, for Strider saved Frodo's life when the wound would have infected his entire arm and poisoned his body. You had to trust a person after something like that.

**#8: Blindfolds**

Gimli grumbled about it, for good reason. Here were elves, who had not been in a serious war with dwarves in an age (literally, an age) and he was the one being discriminated against!

It was the hobbits, the wonderful, kind, _good_ hobbits, who asked if perhaps they could be blindfolded too. Pippin sidled up next to Gimli as Aragorn tied the cloth around his eyes and whispered conspiratorially, "Don't worry. They're not being awful to dwarves anymore. Just us short folk."

Gimli couldn't help his smile.

**#9: Worry**

Sam eyed the river moving so swiftly below him. He looked up at Legolas, then back down at the current. "Legolas?" He murmured, his eyes still on the stream when the prince of Mirkwood looked down at him. "Umm…if we sink…"

"We're not going to sink." Legolas assured him, feeling a sting of annoyance at the accusation.

"If we sink," Sam repeated, "You don't have to worry about me. I don't know how to swim."

Well, after that every time they went over an eddy or through a rapid Legolas thought they were going to sink. And he kept looking at Sam, worrying.

**#10: Myths**

There were stories, so many stories from their different cultures. Boromir spun tales about great knights and long battles. On nights when they could risk a fire, he would make figures in the shadows, using his hands to make horses, swords, spears. Legolas and Aragorn told the legends of the elves and their stories were filled with beauty and something close to magic. Gimli spoke of riches, of the power of the Earth and the power of the close-knit dwarvish community. The Shirelings never stopped talking about the food, the families, the parties. They stumbled over each other's words and hurried along so they could get to the best parts.

And each was a little jealous of the all the other's individual lives.

**#11: Save**

It happened in an instant. One second Legolas was on the banks of the Anduin, the next he was face-first in the water. It was disorienting, and he tried to twist around for his knife, thinking he'd been attacked, when he heard a familiar, gruff voice in his ear. "You alright?"

"Fine." Legolas got to his feet nimbly, watching with some curiosity as Boromir picked himself up. "Why did you hit me?"

"Because that deer was about to take your head out and you were too busy looking at the sparkly water to notice." Boromir grumbled, pointing at a buck that was dashing across the shallows.

Legolas felt a wave of gratitude and ducked his head. "_Le hannon."_

Boromir snorted, already turning away. "You better hope that means 'thank you'. You may be a prince, but insulting me in elvish is only going to get you a good fight."

**#13: Coincidence**

They were all motherless. Strange, how they stumbled upon that fact at different times, all somewhat comforted to let their grief overwhelm them, if only for an instant. They were nine motherless beings, and they all fought long and hard to make sure that there would never again be a group of nine so afflicted.

**#14: Before Departure**

Before they left Rivendell, Legolas ran into Boromir.

It was the early part of the morning and Legolas was taking a walk through the woods he'd frequented for half a century when he came upon a clearing, catching the Gondorian standing over a young, fat doe.

The man had looked up at Legolas's carefully smooth face and snorted. "You do not have to look like that, friend. I'm not planning on letting a life go to waste. I was restless and couldn't sleep, but I don't hunt just for fun. This meat will go a long way on our journey, don't you think?"

"Yes." Legolas agreed, taking a knife out of his belt and tilting his head to find the angle to skin the deer from.

A hand was suddenly thrust into his field of vision and Legolas shook it with a smile. "Boromir son of Denethor. I know you're a big player in all this, elf, but I forget your name."

"Legolas." The prince said, thinking that he liked this man who was so forward with his thoughts. "My name is Legolas."

**#15: In-Between**

In between Moria and Lothlorien, in between the battle with the goblins and the dignity of the elves, in between tears for Gandalf and the dreadful recounting of the story…somewhere in between it occurred to Frodo that what had started off as an adventure and a game had somehow become the most important thing he'd ever done in his life.

**#16: Patches**

Gimli watched as Aragorn wound a bandage around Sam's head, as Boromir tried to staunch the flow of blood spurting out of Pippin's shoulder, as Legolas found a walking stick so Merry could keep up, and decided to come right out and say it.

"That's it, laddies, you're learning how to fight."

**#17: Grudge**

It was just a short scouting mission around the caves that they'd be sleeping in all night. Just a short mission, and then it was noise and shouts and pain and Boromir found himself trapped tunnel with the man who just might be the king of the country he hoped to inherit one day.

It was going to be a long night.

**#17: Illness**

Legolas was the only one who had a big enough family to really understand that if one of them got sick, they all got sick. Which is exactly what happened.

**#18: Prayer**

Boromir was the only one who did it regularly. Boromir, who had been raised to attend religious services every day at the break of dawn, raised to thank his maker for any act of kindness, would get down on his knees, even if he happened to be kneeling in two feet of snow, or ice, or sharp rocks, and murmur quiet prayers, thanking the maker for another day.

**#19: Broken**

They found the two in the clearing, the two men with hands clasped tight around each other, the heir of Isildur bending over the Steward's son, quietly singing the achingly sad song elves murmured when they found one of their own broken.

Legolas and Gimli approached the two carefully, guardedly. They didn't have to. Boromir was already dead.

**#20: Flash**

Aragorn threw the dagger before he really processed the scene. It was early morning, and the rest of the Fellowship was catching up on some much-needed sleep. He slipped through the forest, sure that he was the only awake in this misty half-world of darkness before dawn.

So he threw the knife, because of that flash of brown he saw slipping between the trees. He would have sworn on his life it was a deer, but deer don't scream like that when you hit them.

The scream woke up the Fellowship, and they were armed and running in the direction of it in time to see Aragorn kneeling over Sam who had a knife sticking out of his belly.

**#21: Later**

Years later, Aragorn would still have questions from disbelieving Gondorians who couldn't quite believe the stories. Oh, they had faith in the fact that their king had almost single-handedly driven he Uruk'hai from Helm's Deep, that he had been instrumental in the win at the Black Gate. What they didn't understand was how he could have done it with an elf, a dwarf, a wizard, and four Halflings at his side.

And Aragorn would just smile, because he couldn't explain, could never explain, how exactly a friendship could form among the unlikeliest of people.

**#22: Later**

Years later, Legolas and Gimli and sometimes Faramir and Éowyn, and once (once) even the King of Gondor himself, their Strider, would visit the hobbits in their slow and sedate Shire.

It was an arrangement that worked for all involved. The visitors got to experience the quiet world of the hobbits, soak up the tasks of doing nothing all day, and the small lives of the Halflings were turned on their heads for a couple of days or weeks or months. Even the hobbits liked to change things up once in a while.

**#23: Walking**

The first day wasn't so bad, with Rivendell still in view behind and the whole majesty of Middle Earth spread out before them. Even the first week wasn't awful, because the nobility of the quest was still enough to put a spring in their step.

But it was day after day of dreary walking, and eventually the nine members of the Fellowship grew tired of the tedious monotony. That's when they came up with their own ways to pass the time.

**#24: Talking**

They began to pair up in the strangest configurations. The hobbits were garrulous, curious beings, endlessly fascinated by stories of the exotic places the other members of the Fellowship were from. Frodo found himself often walking with Gimli, comparing notes on Bilbo's story of going to the Misty Mountains and back again – Gimli had heard the dwarf's version, and it turned out there were exaggerations on both sides. Sam found kinship with Legolas, because elves seemed to understand perfectly the serenity a simple plant could bring. Pippin chattered endlessly, flitting from person to person and finally sticking to Boromir. Mostly it was the hobbit who talked, but as soon as the Gondorian opened his mouth Pippin would shit his, a look of surprised happiness passing over his face as the much larger man wove tales of court life, of battles, of his home.

Merry and Aragorn, Strider – they were the last pair, and the least, falling together because of their propensity towards long periods of comfortable silences. They were both watchers – Aragorn protected the whole of the Fellowship. Merry just needed to protect his Pippin.

**#25: Reason Why**

For Boromir, it was for a moment in time. He and Faramir were children, Boromir barely in his teens, untested and itching for adventure. Perhaps that was why they were exploring to those far misty lands to the South. Later in that same trip, Faramir would slice his hand open on a rock and lose so much blood Boromir was sure he'd die from the shock of it.

But the reason why he was on the quest was because of that moment when Faramir shook his shoulder in the early morning, and the two had to shake the dew-drops off their hair in order to look out into the great wide somewhere that surrounded them, astounded by the beauty of the land they lived on.

**#26: Before Departure**

Before they left Rivendell, Legolas ran into Merry and Pippin.

They were fishing in the stream that flowed through Rivendell, catching fish so quickly and with such ease that Legolas was sure they must be whispering incantations to the water. And then they'd unhook the fish and throw it back, uninterested in the meat but only the lazy sport of the activity. The two tiny beings chattered contently to themselves and anyone within earshot, unconcerned that they'd just volunteered for the most perilous war of an age.

**#27: Story**

When it got too dark to walk without tripping over each other, they made camp. In the darkness, a voice would issue, telling old stories that had been passed down for generations, telling about adventures that they had witnessed or been on themselves, and suddenly the darkness wasn't so full of danger anymore. Suddenly the darkness wasn't so dark at all.

**#28: Legolas's Story**

As the youngest of seven, it always seems like Legolas was trying to keep up with his brothers. When they went hunting, he did, too, though eleven was an infant in the eyes of elves. He was sneaking up on a bird when his eldest brother, who was millennia older, with fair hair and open, laughing grey eyes, shot him in the leg.

The story ended there, for Legolas was busy staring at the night sky and had slipped into the strange sleep of the elves. Aragorn, who had heard most of his best friend's stories but not this one, touched his shoulder. "What happened then, _mi mellon?_"

"I learned never to wear green on the hunt."

**#29: Gandalf's Story**

A long time ago, in a time so old it was really before time, there was a young man from a certain city who belonged to a certain family. He was a handsome, romantic young man, and could afford to be for this was a time before war. He fell in love with a girl he shouldn't have fallen in love with, but there is a peculiar thing about love: it doesn't care about political ties or the borders of nations. These two romantics ran away together, but all was not well and through a series of unfortunate events they died. But their deaths were not in vein! The feud between their peoples was put aside for all time in light of the tragedy.

Which just does to show that out of all black things comes a little bit of light.

**#30: Worry**

When they were scattered to all corners of the Earth: Frodo and Sam trekking through Mordor, Merry riding with the Rohirrim, Pippin and Gandalf in Gondor, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli perpetually en route, Boromir on that long last journey to an old wizard's white shores…For that those times that they were apart, each member of their little group thought and worried about all the others. Perhaps that's what the world "Fellowship" really means – even though they were apart, they thought of little else but each other.

**#31: Food**

The men, the elf, the dwarf, the wizard…they all tried to be stoic about the food situation…the lack of a foot situation…but eventually they started to chime in when the hobbits spoke of second breakfast and tea times, of long parties with much eating. When the small folk lamented their bland diet – when they could get anything at all – the others would remember out loud, and in time they became so good at describing delicacies of their respective lands that a few words would make all of their mouths water for times of plenty.

**#32: Healing**

There were so many stories to tell when they were all together, stories of battles and victories, sure, but also of those strange people they met on the road. Looters and thieves and hopeful, young, idyllic soldiers. These stories were murmured in the dead of night, remembered on long walks, spoken in front of large crowds. And soon the words that dripped from their mouths, the stories that tripped out, clamoring to be told, were not just tales of a time past, but a strange, cathartic way, a method to heal them all.

**#33: Scared**

It was after the crows, when they began to realize that their journey was being watched, that some foul, twisted being was drawn to the Ring that hung like a pendant or a noose around Frodo's neck. After that, they were scared. Not of death. Not really. Even the youngest of them understood that there were worse things that passing quietly or gallantly into that dark void. No, they were all terribly afraid of tall towers and the cold, still faces of friends. And they were deeply, terribly afraid of not completing this impossible, hair-brained quest at all.

**#34: Fall**

There are no words to convey how much walking they did. And with so many hundreds of hours on end of trudging through bogs and snow and sand, people were bound to stumble once in a while. The whole party snickered kindly enough one night when even sure-footed Legolas slipped off moss-covered rocks during a storm.

But somehow it wasn't very funny when the same thing happened to Boromir minutes later, when he slipped from the slick stone and suddenly the dark ground was shining with the eerie inner light of blood.

**#35: Boats**

Sometimes, you have to make your own fun in the world. Sometimes, something just has to come along to break the terrible monotony. And sometimes this means that grown beings will race down the ancient Anduin River, laughing and yelling and splashing. And somehow, even as winners were proclaimed at intervals, they all won.

**#36: Resurrection**

You have to remember that they all learned of Gandalf's second life at different times. Merry and Pippin found out first, of cours,e and were delighted at the return of the wizard they'd known since childhood, and even more delighted that this White Wizard wasn't the one they'd been dreading. The man, the elf, and the dwarf stumbled upon Mithrandir just a little while later, and teamed up with him once again.

But the other two little hobbits, the Ring Bearers, the saviors of the world…well, they saw Gandalf for the first time months after they'd mourned his death. It doesn't help that they woke in a white room, that they had been so near death themselves. Gandalf's resurrection stunned these two, scared them, and God bless little Frodo. He looked up, and tears formed in his eyes. How he'd missed this old man!

"Gandalf?" His voice shook, wavered, broke on the single word, but he struggled for more. "Is that really you?"

**#37: Worst Case Scenario**

After the war was over, after they'd won, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli took off before the Ring Bearer and his faithful servant could wake up. They rode to Isengard, because none of them could imagine facing the remaining hobbits without at least a few answers.

They all found themselves hoping, on the terribly long ride to the beaten city, that the hobbits were dead. Better dead, they all thought secretly, each hating themselves for it, but it was true. Better dead than tortured for months on end. Better off dead.

As if they were ever that lucky. It was Gimli who found Merry, naked, beaten, broken. He picked up the small being, now emaciated, weighing no more than a babe, and a single cracked word fell from this thing's lips. "Pippin?"

Legolas was holding Pippin at that moment. The lad was cold, nearly frozen solid in the dungeons. He whispered soft words in elvish, and eventually the sobs subsided. Aragorn could only watch as these two broken creatures were brought together, could only watch as the sight of the other made the hobbits -with broken, twisted bones, with permanent disfigurements, with so much _badness_ that had happened to them – light up, as if nothing had happened at all.

**#38: Before Departure**

Before they left Rivendell, Legolas ran into Samwise Gamgee. Literally.

"Begging your pardon, sir. I didn't see you there." Sam said, though bumping into Legolas had caused the hobbit to fall, not the other way around. He lifted his soft brown eyes to Legolas's and crowed happily. "Why, you're an elf!"

"You're in an elfin city, Halfling, I would imagine you have seen a good many by now." Legolas said with a small smile.

Sam smiled bashfully. "I guess you're right, sir, it's just that I've always wondered about elves and now they're all around me – you're all around me and…" his eyes got wider, if that was possible. "And you're going with Mr. Frodo and us on the journey to get rid of the Ring, aren't you, sir?"

"Call me Legolas." Legolas said, his slim hand encompassing Sam's tiny, eager one. "And yes, I'm going on the journey."

**#39: Secret**

The secret? Sometimes they found themselves liking this awful, terrible quest with danger and blood and death and destruction. Sometimes, each and every member of the Fellowship found themselves liking it a lot.

**#40: Reunion**

Boromir had been waiting for Frodo and Gandalf when they stepped off the boat onto the White Shores. Then it was seconds, of years, of lifetimes, before Sam, the last Ring Bearer, came in search of his old master and his lost love. In an eon, or a heartbeat, were Merry and Pippin, coming in so close together it was nearly simultaneous. Legolas and Gimli sailed over on a gorgeous boat, and Gimli looked younger with every step her took on the white shores.

Aragorn, Strider, heir of Isildur, good King of Gondor, was the last to join the Fellowship on those shores, but when he came with his mortal wife on his arm, he greated his old friends. They were complete now, and all were ready for this time to be together. This time to rest.

**#41: Fight**

The only real argument that split the Fellowship four ways – elf, man, dwarf, hobbit, with the old wizard _tisk_ing at the folly of youth – was over what place of Middle Earth was most beautiful. The row ended after a night's rest and the breaking of their fast, but no race ever gave in to the others, each holding their home as the best in all the world.

**#42: Defender**

On the journey home, Gimli, the hobbits, and Legolas stepped into a tavern on the outskirts of Rohan. It was there that they encountered the anti-Halfling sentiment for the first time.

A group of men, drunk ex-soldiers who'd lost friends and family at Helm's Deep and the battles that followed, surrounded Merry in one of the dark corners. They'd only gotten two punches in before Legolas and Gimli arrived, yanking the tiny Rider of the Mark from the drunkards' clutches before turning on the men, fists clenches, eyes burning with fire.

**#43: Conversation**

"Merry, wake up."

"What's the matter, Pip?"

"There's something in the forest!"

"Then wake Strider and Gandalf. Let me sleep."

"But Merry -"

"There is nothing in the forest, is there, Pip?"

"It is very dark, and there are noises -"

"It is merely the sounds that accompany sleeping in the middle of a forest, my very young cousin. Perhaps it is possible you wish for company on your watch?"

"…Perhaps…"

"Isn't Boromir on watch with you?"

"Please, Merry."

"Your mother once told me that if I keep giving into you it would be the death of me one day." But Merry did get up, and he did join his cousin on the watch, and that was enough for Pippin.

**#44: Conversation**

"Laddie, what is that poking its nose from your pack?"

"A rabbit, master dwarf. She'll make a mighty good supper on these sold nights. Not much meat, but it flavors stew goodly enough."

"Aye, but wouldn't a dead rabbit do better?"

"Oh, I'll kill her. It's only that she's mighty warm and soft and.."

"You got a big heart, laddie." Gimli just hoped that Sam's heart would be as big after this journey.

**#45: Conversation**

"It will take us two weeks to reach the base of the Misty Mountains."

"We'll do it in one."

"Really? It seems a mighty long distance to travel, especially with these Halflings and their short legs."

"One week, and you'll be able to touch her craggy sides."

"I'll take you up on that wager, friend." Boromir ended up being right. Aragorn conceded a week and a half later. The tiny hobbits and their legs, not to mention the sheer _distance_, made Aragorn smile ruefully at the Gondorian as the other man let out a long, barking laugh.

**#46: Nature**

When they were at their lowest, when Gandalf, the mentor, the guardian, fell, and all hope seemed lost. When the tears were still fresh on their faces, grief still banging in their hearts, that's when they saw the doe standing at the base of the mountain with two fawns cowering behind her.

This glimpse into the rest of the world – not just hobbit or dwarf or man or elf but those other creatures that they shared ht world with, didn't alleviate their sorrow, but it did give them the strength to keep pressing forward, the will to go on.

So, really, some of the credit for saving the world should go to the deer.

**#47: Peace**

Merry, who had grown up on the bands of the Brandywine, was used to fishing in streams, and he taught the others how to tie a line so it drifted through the water, enticing the fish to it. He taught them to reel it in and how to wrestle the fish into a sack without capsizing the boat, or when to give the fish back to the river. He taught them how to cultivate peace.

**#48: Friendship**

It was jumping into battle when the odds were against you for that hope of saving another. It was giving up blankets or food or sleep or quiet in order to keep one of the others from reaching the end of their rope. It was protecting them from enemies, from elements, from insanity. It was songs and stories and stews and secrets. It was reminding everyone what they were fighting for.

And, for them, friendship was the eight other people in the world that they were really risking their lives to save.

**#49: Alternate Universe**

In a different world, the Ring stayed hidden with Golum under the Misty Mountains. Frodo's parents never drowned and he never went to live in Hobbiton with his rich uncle Bilbo. He never became friends with Sam the gardener and never really got close to his younger cousins, Merry and Pippin, instead opting to hang around his older family members. Frodo eventually married and fathered nine children. Sam still married Rosie Cotton and remained a gardener all his life. Merry and Pippin knew each other, were each other's best friends, but never married.

In Rivendell, a Ranger with a strange past flitted in and out and pined for the elf girl that grew up there, but he was a man of little consequence and less means, so who was he to take a princess from her palace?

He still knew the youngest Prince of Mirkwood, though, and Legolas and he remained best friends until Aragorn's eventual death – later than other humans but far, far earlier than the immortality elves possessed – drove this youngest prince nearly to madness. He sailed to the Grey Havens when an old grey wizard found he'd had enough of this world, too.

In his caves under the mountains, Gimli tried and mostly succeeded in bringing about a Golden Age for dwarves. He became king, a good, just king, beloved by the people. His biggest accomplishment was reclaiming the mines of the Misty Mountains from the goblins, and making a treaty with the nearby elves of Mirkwood that basically said that if they didn't bother the dwarves, the dwarves wouldn't bother them.

Gondor, which had been sick the same way Denethor was sick, regained some of its splendor under Boromir and his most trusted advisor Faramir. They never did stop the sieges from Isengard and Mordor, though, and one day the younger brother rode out to battle and didn't return. The Steward was never the same after that.

All nine moved through the world in their own way, insignificant to the vast times of history. They never knew of the impact they could have made if only for a Ring with the power to turn the world on its head. Now that destiny, in this universe, was for someone else.

**#50: Love**

How do you measure this relationship between nine beings, between four races? There were so many steps, sores, saves, arrows shot at the right moment, words whispered for strength. There were jokes exchanges and stories told and promises made and remembered. There were bonds of loyalty formed, friendships that would become tales for the ages. There were lives given willingly so others could live. There was all the laughter, all the blood and tears, all the work and sweat and small smiles and strong, comforting clasps of the hand.

There was so much love within this Fellowship that by the time their journey was over, and even when some were gone, the nine would remember the battles and the wars and the pain. They would remember the roads and civilizations and armies. And they would remember that love that bloomed in spite of it all, because of it all.

And that love made all these other moments, all these other strange, beautiful, terrible flashes of time, worth it.

.***.

**This is the last bit, everyone, as you can probably guess from the subject. Once more, pick your favorites and write to us. We'll do it the democratic way and turn the best-liked drabble into a one-shot.**


	18. Interlude IX

**_#20: Flash_**

_Aragorn threw the dagger before he really processed the scene. It was early morning, and the rest of the Fellowship was catching up on some much-needed sleep. He slipped through the forest, sure that he was the only awake in this misty half-world of darkness before dawn._

_So he threw the knife, because of that flash of brown he saw slipping between the trees. He would have sworn on his life it was a deer, but deer don't scream like that when you hit them._

_The scream woke up the Fellowship, and they were armed and running in the direction of it in time to see Aragorn kneeling over Sam who had a knife sticking out of his belly._

.***.

A miserable day was dawning, and the sun reflecting a million diamonds off the dew drops of the grass forced Aragorn out of his brooding. It was the fourth day since Gandalf's death. Four days, and he still could not reconcile the fact in his mind. Gandalf had been a fixation in his life since childhood, like a particularly comforting book or a favorite sometimes-hiding place. A place to go to when things started to look bleak, something he'd thought would be around forever until it wasn't.

The members of the Fellowship were reacting in different ways, and on some level Aragorn knew that it would just take time and patience to truly put Gandalf's death behind them. Patience he had, but time…here in the depths of the wilderness, he could almost forget that he was not the leader of the group in charge of changing the course of history.

Though the Fellowship was trying to be stoic about their grief - even Legolas, who'd known Gandalf the longest, centuries longer than Aragorn, even the little hobbits, to whom Gandalf had been something of a novelty, flitting into their lives at random intervals like a favorite uncle, always bearing gifts and stories – it was the circumstances that made the sudden death all the worse.

They'd escaped remarkably unscathed from their first real battle. Yes, Frodo's front was one big bruise. Yes, the gash in Boromir's side would probably be a scar for the rest of his life. Yes, Gimli had broken three fingers on an orc's helm, but it could have been worse, so much worse.

In the rising hour of the sun, Aragorn knew that he had to boost morale somehow. A difficult thing, since they were all hundreds of miles from their homes, since they had to keep on the move. And then he spotted his hunting knife.

Sam was surprisingly capable of concocting enticing meals out of very few provisions, but even his vast knowledge of how to stretch food to make it last couldn't work its magic when they lost most of their provisions in the Mines. They'd spent the last few days eating herbs and berries, and a good hearty meal of dried pork or venison could do wonders on everyone's moods.

So Aragorn made sure that Boromir was up for the last watch, the two hours before they had to pack up and ship out, and then he slipped into the woods, moving with stealth he'd learned from his elvish brothers.

Every step brought out new wonders in the forest. Here was a blue bird guarding her nest. There, a badger peeking blearily out of his hole. And up ahead, the soft crunching of leaves under the paws of a fox.

Aragorn loved hunting, always had. He let himself think about nothing at all, just stare around at the forest, blade or bow lax in his hand, and when he saw that flash, the brown movement of a deer, he would move with speed that belayed the fact that he was Dúnedain.

He had walked for less than five minutes, his pace slow, his breathing even and easy, taking in the cold morning air, when he saw that flash and threw.

It never occurred to him that it may not be a deer or wolf or bear, that it may be a sentient being, that it may be one of the people he'd been trying to lead.

But that cry – deer don't make that noise, nor wolves, nor bears. It was full of pain, but more than that, it was full of surprise. And Aragorn ran forward, heart beating fast, unable to really process this because he couldn't have hurt Samwise Gamgee, that would be impossible.

Somehow (and later, Aragorn would find that these next few minutes were a blur, fuzzy like reality becomes after a good blow to the head, or the heart) he picked up the tiny being (and what he _does_ remember is eyes so wide and surprised and confused that Aragorn felt his heart break at the sight of them) and ran, ran back to the clearing and the camp and the comfort of a fire.

Everyone woke when their leader tumbled into their camp. Legolas jumped nimbly to his feet, the half-sleep of elves being suspended for this crisis; Gimli yelled and, with surprising agility, unsheathed his ax and pointed it at the thing that had woken him from his slumber; Boromir, who'd been on watch, merely stood and took the bleeding body from Aragorn's arms. Sam was the largest of the hobbits, but he still weighed no more than the child. It didn't occur to Aragorn what Boromir was doing, taking this slight weight, until the words of his oldest friend began making it through the frantic haze his mind was stuck in.

"Estel? Are you alright? You're bleeding, _mellon_. Please, let me care for you."

"I am uninjured." Aragorn ground out, looking with disbelief at the unmoving body of Sam. Had the Halfling died in his arms?

"Were you attacked?" Gimli asked innocently. He didn't know, couldn't have known what had happened in the forest, was craning his neck to see if Aragorn had inadvertently led anyone to their camp, but the Ranger still felt a sting of guilt at this question.

"No. I was hunting and thought I saw a deer…it was Sam." He waited for the others to berate him, to distrust him, but all he saw when he looked into their eyes was understanding. Every one of them had gone hunting before, and every one of them had heard the horror stories of friend hitting friend with an arrow, a knife, because they'd gotten separated and that flash of movement that heralded the appearance of the game was no different than the flash of a man, or elf, or hobbit.

Merry had gotten down on all fours and was taking off Sam's pack. Why had the Halfling taken his pack into the forest? Why had he been in there in the first place? Aragorn's mind wasn't working correctly, couldn't process what was happening right in front of him (which was strange, because he'd been though wars, because he was the man who kept his head even when everything went wrong.)

Legolas's comforting hand on his shoulder, the warm weight of it, was all that anchored him to the world. That, and the scarlet blood that was blooming from the too-large wound in Sam's side. On an adult human or elf, the stab of a knife would be agonizing, would cause damage, but if it hit where Aragorn's had hit, it was not usually fatal.

This wound, though, on a being of Sam's size…it could go either way.

"Oh, Sam." Aragorn cut his eyes to Frodo, who had peered inside Sam's pack only to find two large rabbits there. So Sam had had the same thought as Aragorn, had slipped out in the early hours of the morning to find some meat. Somehow, that made it worse.

"Estel, you are the best healer I know." Legolas spoke in elvish, and the sound of the beautiful language of his childhood finally made Aragorn shake himself into motion.

He spoke quickly to Pippin, the smallest and therefore the fastest, since he could slip with enviable ease under the branches of even the shortest trees. The old Ranger needed athelas, alfirin, lissuin, uilos…he explained hurriedly what each looked like, realizing as he did that the best person for this job was spilling blood like priceless rubies onto the cold earth.

Once Pippin took off, disappearing into the forest with the practiced ease of one used to running from authority, Aragorn set to work. Bandages, hot water, a needle flicked over a flame, and the whole time Aragorn was mumbling all the prayers he knew, because words have power, especially elvish words, and he wouldn't leave anything to chance anymore.

"Strider," The name tripping quietly from a hobbit's lips made Aragorn flinch, and he looked up blearily from his handiwork. Sam would live. He would be in great pain, and would move slowly, but he would live.

"Strider," Frodo began again, "Please eat something." He proffered a bowl and the sight of the rabbit that Sam had caught made Aragorn physically and violently ill.

He stood up, breathing through his nose, and went over to the edge of the clearing, trying to find some way to get the balance back in his mind. He looked over his shoulder at the Fellowship he was expected to lead, at that Ring, dangling from Frodo's neck.

And suddenly he felt cold, very cold, because suddenly he wasn't sure of anything – of his hunting abilities, or his leadership abilities, or whether they'd be able to complete this quest at all. Suddenly, the future seemed grey, murky.

All that Aragorn could think of at that moment was the scream he'd heard when the knife was driven into Sam's belly. He would be atoning for that scream for the rest of his life.

.***.

**Not exactly a happy note to end on, but this is the end. Thanks to everyone for reading it, double thanks to those who dropped us a line.  
-Gandalf**


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